A Legacy of Love, Baking and Family
For as long as I can remember, my mother baked. Her mother, my grandmother, was well known for her baking (particularly her wedding and anniversary cakes, but also her pies, cookies and, of course, her fudge), so you might say baking was in my mother’s blood. When my siblings and I went to school, it was with homemade zucchini, banana or pumpkin bread for snacks and homemade cookies or brownies for treats in our lunch boxes. I remember being jealous of the store-bought snacks and treats my friends would bring to school, but looking back now, I know exactly how lucky we were to have those snacks and treats made with love and so much better than anything found on the shelves of a store.
When we had a birthday party, the centerpiece was the cake she baked and decorated just for us (a tradition that I have carried on with my children). At first, she would give us a stack of Wilton cake decorating books and let us choose anything we wanted from within those pages and she would bring it to life for us. As we got older, she allowed us more creative freedom – we would choose popular characters or themes that were dear to our hearts and she would design a cake to showcase whatever we had chosen. If a popular character was featured, my father (or, later, sometimes I) would sketch the character with a toothpick or cake tester into the crumb coat on the cake, so she had a blueprint to follow. As her family grew, she continued to do the same for each of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, with the cakes getting more elaborate and structurally complex over the years (but she never compromised the flavor or texture of the cakes, everyone always loved to eat her cakes as much as they enjoyed looking at them).
For my mom, baking was always an inclusive activity. She would let us help add ingredients, stir mixtures, form dough into balls or roll it out. Even before we had the dexterity to really help, she would have us in a seat on the counter, right in the middle of all that delicious activity (I don’t remember that experience for myself, but I saw her do exactly the same with each of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they came along). She was never upset with any of us when we inevitably snuck a taste of various ingredients (I had a weakness for brown sugar), and I remember how she laughed the first time we tasted plain cocoa powder or vanilla extract (I can only imagine the looks on our faces when that unexpected bitterness hit our tongues). I credit my mother’s approach to family in the kitchen, everyone immersed in cooking and baking, with my enduring love for baking.
When it came to holidays, it seems that every time her family expanded, so did her holiday baking list. It was always so important to her that each family member had a special favorite treat at each holiday meal and she took pains to ensure that no one was ever disappointed. She kept all of her recipes in big binders, one for savory dishes, one for desserts and one specifically for holidays. The holiday binder had a separate folder insert for each major holiday. Inside each folder were all the recipes she used for that holiday, both savory and sweet, with each type neatly clipped together in their own pile. Many of the recipes were duplicated across all the folders, such family favorites that they made the list for every holiday. Certain recipes were, for her, so inextricably linked to individual family members that she would not make them if that family member could not be present. One of my nephews especially loved her apple squares, a giant slab pie filled with spiced apples and cranberries and topped with a sweet glaze. When he passed at a very young age, she could no longer bring herself to make what was, for her, his special treat.
About thirty years ago, my mother suffered an injury that completely changed the trajectory of her life. The ongoing symptoms caused by that injury made many things you or I take for granted impossible for her, but she never once let that define her. Daily, she defied the doctors’ expectations of what, according to them, she should be able to do and did what she wanted to do. She was the strongest person I have ever known, the heart and soul our family and my role model for living life with strength, grace, love and laughter. At the beginning of June, my mother left this mortal world for whatever it is that comes next, but she has bequeathed to all of us a legacy of love and family expressed through cherished recipes, favorite treats and holiday traditions. In sharing that legacy, I hope to keep her alive in our hearts and memories, an enduring thread in our family tapestry.
My father and siblings were kind enough to entrust me with custodianship of her savory and dessert recipe binders, containing all the recipes that she had tried (or created), loved and perfected (including those that made the holiday cut). Some are neatly written by hand on a variety of recipe cards that spanned her many decades in the kitchen. Others she typed up and printed out and still others she carefully cut out of newspapers or magazines and glued onto cardstock backing before also adding them to her binders. In tribute to her, I will be running an ongoing series of posts recreating and sharing some of our family’s most beloved of my mother’s recipes. A handful of family recipes already made their way onto my site, and you can see those present in the carousel below. As I recreate and share more they will also appear in the carousel, or you can search for “heirloom recipes”.
More recipes you might enjoy:
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