I love this time of year. When fall rolls around I get even more excited about baking than I do any other time of the year. Summer ends and the real baking begins. The last months of the year are full of special reasons to spend time with family, share smiles, and bake sweet memories.
One of my favorite baking memories is making pecan pies with my uncle. We make them every year around Christmas but I thought I’d share the recipe with you again a little early this year. It’s too good to wait until December.
My grandmother used to make these pecan pies. Her recipe made three perfect pies at a time. She made them every year for family and friends. She loved it. And when she became less able to keep up with the same quantity of pies she liked to make, my uncle Ronnie became the official pie maker. He doesn’t bake and he’s not really a dessert guy but he makes a mean pecan pie. He’s been making them now for well over a decade since my grandmother passed away. He’s continued making them every year for friends and family to carry on his Mama’s tradition. And now I bake with him every year I can and if not I make sure to bake them in my own kitchen. It’s our family’s way of keeping her with us during the holidays.
And the pies are delicious too, so that’s awesome.
Of course, I had to put my touch on them and make them mini. Major cute. But I still wrap them just like she did. Simple and sweet. I love these refrigerated and I eat them like a giant pecan pie cookie.
Here’s the recipe how my grandmother made it and here’s a link to the original post with step-by-step photos demonstrated by my uncle and a little more about my grandmother.
And keep scrolling for a fun giveaway below…
Mama's Pecan Pies
Ingredients
Instructions
In a separate bowl, crack open six eggs. Remove the “roosters” and loosely beat the eggs with your spoon.
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And now, I’d love for you to share your favorite baking memory.
Holiday or any day.
You could be the lucky baker to win a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and a Williams-Sonoma Gift Card.
- Prize includes a KitchenAid Stand Mixer (valued at approximately $650) and a $200 Williams-Sonoma gift card. Approximate Retail Value: $850. Tasty!
- Giveaway runs from September 24, 2012 at 12:00 am ET through October 8, 2012 at 11:59 pm ET. Sorry, Time’s Up! Winner will be announced this week.
- One entry per person. You must live in the U.S. for this one (I’m sorry my international friends) and be 18 or over, too to be eligible to win.
- To enter for a chance to win the mixer and gift card, just leave a comment on the website and share your favorite baking memory. And if you don’t have one yet, the giveaway lasts long enough for you to bake one. : )
- One winner will be chosen at random and announced during the week of October 8th in a follow up post here on the site.
- Note that it may take a few minutes for your comment to display.
Good luck guys and I can’t wait to read your baking memories.
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This post is sponsored by Nestlé® Toll House® Morsels, the perfect special ingredient for all of your family’s favorite treats!
My favorite memory is of baking holiday cookies with my grandma. I got to do it for the last time about a month before she died, and I am so grateful for that memory and the special time we got to spend together!
Every year my mom and I would make fudge. It always turned out so yummy! One year we were busy visiting and not quite paying close attention to what we were doing. My mom was in charge of pouring the chocolate in while I was mixing the hot mixture. She inadvertently set the bowl of chocolate on the still hot burner. And yup, it was a plastic bowl. It took the smell of burning plastic to realize what was happening! Then we tried to take the bowl off the burner. There was stringy plastic all over! But the fudge still turned out great! I actually think that year it was the best we ever made.
I have a very vivid memory of making chocolate cookies with my mom when I was little. Don’t know why that memory stands out so much (I have a terrible memorry), but I remember rolling balls of dough in sprinkles and having a great time!
Once a year making glazed raised doughnuts with Mom. It’s been 30 years since we did, but I remember they are better than Krispy Kreme any day.
One of my favourite baking memories was when I baked cookies for three days in a row! I was actually home sick and wanted to do something to cheer myself up and decided to bake molasses cookies for my mom to bring to work. The cookies went over so well they asked for more!
My favorite memory is the kids assembling a ginger bread house and using canned goods to prop up the walls on the inside!!!
I love baking goodies for our neighbors during the holiday season! We don’t always make the same thing, but last year we baked cinnamon rolls. They were a hit!
One of my favorite baking memories is getting together every year with my Mom and my sisters and baking recipe after recipe of Christmas cookies which we then divide up and take home to our families. It’s a great day of catching up, spending time together, and making wonderful goodies for the holidays!
Every Thanksgiving, I get to make the apple pie. My cousin, whom I rarely get to see, always comes over the night before and we decorate the pie together. Despite being a bit cheesy, some of my best memories ever – not just with baking – are decorating those pies. One year, we carved an apple into the center. The next year, not wanting to fall short of the previous year’s design, we took the extra dough and made a nice turkey for the top. It seems silly now that I’m retelling it, but I’ll always hold those memories close to my heart, no matter how far apart my cousin and I end up.
My favorite baking memory is making chocolate chip cookies with my granma for Christmas.
My favorite baking memories are from Christmas every year. My children help me make around 30 different kinds of cookies. We have so much fun!
My favorite baking memory is making snowman cake pops with my brother. We made a full batch for all our friends and neighbors; it was like a snowman army.
i just spent the afternoon with a friend making peanut butter crunch ice cream! yum!
I used to bake with my grandmother. She passed away in 1983, but I remember sitting in her kitchen like it was yesterday. She would always let me help her bake my favorite, a cinnamon pudding. Her house smelled wonderful each and every time she made one. A couple of years later, I entered her recipe in a baking contest and won. They asked for the recipe and I told them it was a secret family recipe. I didn’t want to reveal my grandmother’s secrets. LOL!
My favorite baking memory is making Christmas cookies with my friends. Every single surface was covered in cookie dough, cutters, icing, and sprinkles. We had so much fun, and we gave cookies to friends and neighbors. Baking the cookies was fun, but watching people’s faces light up at our cookies was even better.
One of my fondest memories is when my mom gave me my very own Betty Crocker cookbood the one with the binder! I started with the first dessert recipe and went all the way to the end of the desert recipes.
I love cooking with my family! Over the last few years, we’ve all tried to contribute 1 new recipe and I love tasting what my family picks!
I remember “Grampus”–a baker by trade–making little loaves of bread for us grandkids. I can still remember their sweet, yeasty aroma! We would slather them with real butter and gobble them down while they were still warm!!
When the weather became cooler in the fall, my mom made huge batches of Mexican wedding cookies which I would help her make. I was young, so she did all the baking, but let me help make the dough balls and help mix. She would give them to friends and family and keep a bunch for us to eat. Yum!
I used to make yummy treats with my grandmother and mom and now I make a variety of treats every year for Christmas for our friends and for my husbands coworkers. They look forward to our yearly gift….especially my homemade marshmallows.
I think my favorite baking memory would be decorating simple sugar cookies with my family and wrapping them up on colorful holiday plates and giving them away to friends.
My mom was a working mom and a going back to college mom. (I admire her immensley for that!) So cooking/baking was not a favorite thing for her to do. But at Christmas time, we would make cookies. My favorite was always the pattern cookies. We would bake them weeks before christmas, even frost and decorate them. Then put them into the Tupperware containers with wax paper between the layers. (very important! LOL) I loved doing that with her. But I really loved sneaking to the deep freeze in the basement and “helping myself” to the cookies!!
Making biscuits with my mama….we always made a jelly biscuit with that last little bit of dough.
I remember sitting quietly on a stool watching my grandmother make pie crusts. She wasn’t the type of grandmother that wanted help but she made wonderful cream pies and meat pies! I was happy just to sit there and watch her and smell all the lovely smells. I now have three little grandchildren, toddlers. You better believe that I will have them helping me in the kitchen … making memories … it couldn’t get any better than that!
Every year for Valentines day my mom would make heart shaped sugar cookies with raspberry frosting- they are still my favorite to this day!
My favorite memories are baking batches and batches of goodies around christmas time to give to family, friends and coworkers. My mom and i used to do this when I still lived there, but now continue the tradition with my wonderful boyfriend :)
My favorite holiday baking memory was the one(!) year I wasn’t crazily baking, covered in flour, powdered sugar, and lord knows what else to get all the goodies done in time to give them out at our Christmas Eve party! Every year, the 24th rolls around and somehow it just hasn’t gotten done…and of course, by that time we are off and away, staying at my husband’s grandmother’s house, with none of my usual baking supplies so I have to improvise like crazy! ONE year I managed to plan well enough and have it all done the day before. It’s crazy but…it’s always worth it!
But my overall favorite is ANY time one of my kids willingly helps me bake – some spilled flour or even vanilla is always outweighed by the time spent together!
I have a great memory of baking mini blackberry pies with my best friend in elementary school – we even picked the berries ourselves! I also have lots and lots of happy memories of baking with my mom :)
My favorite memory is learning how to make Lebonese food with my grandmother, just like my mom learned from her, and she learned from her mom, and she learned from her mom :)
I love baking since i was a kid….now that i have a family and a beautiful daughter who just turned 1 lastAugust, my baking skills have been exercise as well. Every month we celebrate her birthday and i will bake different kinds from chocolate, mocha,cake, egg or custard pies and even your cake pops….i would love to do it again but she grows so fast..
One of my many favorite baking memories is baking different treats every holiday with my sister and mom! Especially the linzer tart cookies every Christmas! We usually find the cutest baking ideas on bakerella!! :-)
A couple weeks before Christmas I go into Mommy overdrive preparing baked goods for when our five adult children, they’re kids and significant others will be home. They always look forward to the cookies, cakes and pies I baked when they were kids. For the 4-7 days that they are home I bake, 20+ dz cookies, 5 sweet potato pies, a 14″ chocolate truffle cake, 2 pound cakes and a couple batches of brownies. Believe it or not, it all disappears. Thank goodness we all love to workout.
All of the girls in my family get together to have a cookie baking session just before Christmas. We each bring our favorite recipe we found that year and share the cookies. It’s the best time of the year!
For as long as I can remember, me and my mom love cooking in the kitchen. I remember the one time I was trying bake my first chocolate chip cookies. It was shakey at first, like almost putting to much baking powder in the batter. But my mom came to the rescue and helped me through out the whole recipe. Even though I was stubborn for not wanting her help, because I wanted to do it on my own. In the end, the cookies tasted delicious, my cookie monster dad sneaked 5 cookies from the jar (Cookie monster: COOKIE! nom nom nom!). Now when i want to learn about types of food or cooking style techniques, my mom will always be to guide me. Now I want to make cookies ;)
My favorite time to bake has always been the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. When I was in school, I was allowed to take that day off and all of the women in the family came to my mom’s house. We would bake all day for Thanksgiving desserts. For that one day, no matter how old I was, I was one of the ladies in the family. Now, everyone comes to my house to bake.
Definitely baking with my mother when I was a little girls and my 2 gorgeous daughters. Every year they help me bake Christmas cookies from scratch. It’d one of their favorite traditions!!
When I was a teenager, I began baking with a toaster oven and the very first dessert I made was cheesecake with the store bought oreo crust.
Favorite baking memory was 30 some odd years ago when my stuffed animals would happen to have a birthday out of the blue, so my very busy mom would bake muffins, bread, or if I was really lucky a small cake to celebrate.
My favorite baking memory is when I baked cupcakes for the first time and frosted them with a fancy tip. Chocolate :)
Being Pregnant with my 1st child, I was baking with 2 of my sister in laws right before Christmas. I was due early January, but had been having contractions off and on for awhile. They kept saying I was going to have my baby on Christmas and I kept disagreeing with them. We had so much fun making Christmas goodies and dreaming about my impending new bundle of joy. long story short, they were right, my first born son made his appearance on December 25th, 2006. Every year we talk about that baking day!
For the first party I ever hosted in my own place, all by myself, I cooked about 10 different types of cookies and cupcakes. It was Christmastime and though my legs were killing me from standing up for so long, it was so great to have all my friends over and have that Christmas-y baking smell all through the apartment.
my favorite baking memory is when I was baking with my mommy. she had this sugar cookie recipe that was to die for and she always invited me over to help decorate them. those days were the good days<3
when i was a teenager i baked all the time cookies, cupcakes, pies, cobblers, cakes, cinnamon rolls. cookies were my favorite to make and my grandpa would stop by our house on the way home from work several times a week.
i would always try to have a just warm cookie ready for him to sample. he would always smile and tell me how good it was, then take an extra cookie and slip it into the pocket of his flannel jacket. “to save for later” he’d say.
My favorite baking memory has always been with my mother. She has taught me everything I know and I just LOVE to bake her famous sweet potato bread. Yep that’s right. Not pie. Sweet potato bread. Lol and it is soooo yummy. I come over to her house for all my baking needs and will continue to do so because its great bonding with her.
My favorite baking memories are from baking Chanukah cookies with my mom and siblings. We have (had) cookie cutters in all different shapes and had fun sprinkling sprinkles and chocolate chips for hours… Such fun
And of course – eating them!
I love that baking memories always involve holidays and strong women in our lives!
I didn’t grow up close to my father’s side of the family as a child. I didn’t meet most of my family members on that side until I was about 10 or so, and that was of course awkward and difficult to get used to all of these new people! But I’ll always remember my step-granny bringing me to her house one afternoon, not too long after meeting her for the first time, for a girls day. It was fall, nearing Halloween, and we baked slime-green colored peanut butter cookies together. We watched scary movies that afternoon with all the lights on and blinds open (so we wouldn’t get scared!), and chowed down on our spooky cookies. It was wonderful. My grandma Jan passed away a few years later, but I think about her and our day we spent baking and being silly together very often. Gotta love families, right? <3
Oh goodness, one of my favorite memories is actually a complete disaster. It was when I was just learning to love baking–maybe high school? I was attempting to make BOXED brownies with my grandmother. Well, it was the first time I had ever made brownies and didn’t realize they are not like cakes with the toothpick test. Yes, it took me three boxes to figure out that the reason my brownies were rock hard was because I was over baking them! I stay away from brownies now. They are my worst enemy when it comes to the kitchen.
My favorite kitchen memories used to be the ones baking with my grandmas before I had my little guy. Now, my favorite thing is baking with him. I love it when he says ‘let’s make cookies!’ right outta the blue. And that’s what we do. we go into the kitchen and make them right then. There’s nothing better than a 3 yr old helper. He loves it so much that I can’t turn on the mixer without him grabbing a chair and pushing it up to the counter to see what I’m doing.
My oldest baking memory is still my favorite. Having moved a lot as a child, I didn’t get to see my grandparents very often but when we did my grandmother and I would make 7-layer bars. I loved layering the ingredients and sneaking a few chocolate chips when grandma wasn’t watching. These are still my favorite bars and how I learned that you didn’t have to measure everything exactly to bake amazing desserts! It’s how I really started cooking and baking instead of reading.
Growing up I had a mother that loved baking and cooking, making each holiday a special treat! I know I grew up spoiled and decided to make it a priority to do the same with my children. 3 Christmases ago, I came across a wonderful cookie book at the store and went out of my way to make almost all of the recipes, and enjoyed creating baskets and plates with my girls. I gave a huge basket to my husband to take to his work, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed them. Then, on Christmas Eve, we drove around delivering them to our family and friends while listening to Christmas music! It was such a great time, one that I cherish and hope to repeat and that they will want to recreate with their own children someday.
Mine is baking desserts with my mom growing up for both Thanksgiving and Christmas! But now I am doing it with my son and daughter too!!!
My favorite memory was making spritz cookies with my mom at Christmas time. The sound of the spritz punch will be forever ingrained in my mind. :)
My favorite memory is every Halloween my mom would make the best homemade pizza. Even though we had it at other times during the year it became a tradition for Halloween. I made that same pizza for my kids and now my daughter makes the same pizza for her kids on Halloween. Who would of that that pizza recipe would have stuck around for so long!
My favorite memory is my mom making an old, old family recipe called Butterhorns. They are made with bread dough that has some lemon in it. The dough is rolled out and butter is spread on. Then brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts are added. They are SO delicious. I have tried for many years to replicate the recipe but they never turn out as good as my mom’s. This summer my daughter took my two granddaughters over for a lesson on Butterhorns. Great-grandma had them busy helping! That’s a memory they have too.
my favorite memory is the day after Thanksgiving…we go cut down our tree from our local tree farm…we would go home and bake cookies to decorate our tree.
I was 8 years old and got my first easy bake oven. My grandmother and I started to bake the little cakes. She saw that i loved to bake so she graduated me to the bigger oven (with her guidance of course), and now we bake together all the time :)
I have many fun baking memories from when I was younger helping my mom and grandmother in the kitchen. Now that I live in another state, it is especially nice when I am home visiting and have time for baking in the kitchen. Last Christmas was especially wonderful because I was able to decorate fancy cookies with my young niece, Karissa, for the first time. It was so fun to be working with her in the kitchen while all the other women in the family were bustling around. Ahhhhh, such sweet memories!
I have too many childhood baking memories to pick a favorite – so much so that instead of party favors I wanted a cookie table at my wedding. My mom and I, grandmother, mother-in-law, and grandmother-in-law stirred up dough and baked for months, I lost track of how many different kinds of beautiful and delicious cookies we had! We even had fancy paper bags for guests to take home some of their favorites.
Baking for the Holidays with my mom and friends. We’d always start with quite an ambitious plan covering multiple kinds of cookies, bars and candies, and right about 3/4 of the way through (while frosting batch 5 of sugar cookies) we’d all ask ourselves why we didn’t remember that frosting 5 batches of sugar cookies was too much and tell ourselves we’d remember next year to limit it to 2 or 3. Never worked. So batches 4 and 5 may not have been too pretty, but they tasted wonderful all the same and we’d get a laugh out of that part of our annual tradition. :)
My favorite baking moment was when my grandmother showed me for the first time how to bake chocolate chip cookies. Ever since then I havn’t been able to stay out of the kitchen.
I love making Gingerbread houses for the nieghborhood kids…every year I would preassembled 30 gingerbread houses and invite the kids in my neighborhood over for a day of decorating and eating. It really gets me in the holiday spirit.
My favorite baking memory is when my mother hosted an open house for my dad’s work. Instead of catering it like he usually did, my mom and I volunteered to do the whole thing. It was so much work but worth it. I have a lot of funny memories of my mom and I in the kitchen. I love the way we work together and it always makes me laugh when I think about the later it got, the sillier we got. I would do it again in a heart beat!
my favorite baking memories are the future ones I’ll be making with my grandchildren
When I was in my late teens, I decided it would be super cool to make a cake for a friend from my grandmother’s old 1963 Gourmet’s Menu Cookbook. This Chocolate Cream Cake was a Genoise Cake with Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting. The recipe had a ton of butter & eggs, required more than a teen’s skill. This cake had to weigh nearly 10 lbs from all the butter and chocolate covering this sucker. The final product was a lopsided wreck and unpresentable. We did enjoy eating the butter-laden chocolatey mess while I endured some mild grief.
It’s my favorite baking story because the messes can be just as much fun. I still have the cookbook, occasionally read about weird stuff people ate in the 60’s and think of my grandmother who taught me how to cook and to accept my baked failures with a sense of humor.
My favorite baking memory is making my Nanny’s honey pecan bars with my mom, aunts, and Mimi. We just simply call them Nanny Nut Bars – they are simply divine and we love making them to share with others, since they are so unique and special to our family.
Making cookies with my older sister. My sister had to be the boss and do the fun stuff like dumping in ingredients and mixing, while I was the “helper” who got things out of cupboards and pre-measured for her! I don’t know how she got away with that, but that was just the way it was!
I remember helping my mom bake apple pie when I was very young, and she would take the crust cuttings and roll them up with cinnamon and sugar, then bake them to create “snails” for us to snack on while the pie cooled!
My mom’s aunt Ruby used to make homemade cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning each year. When I was about 2, my family moved far, far away. So, my dad learned how to make homemade cinnamon rolls for my mom for Christmas morning. As I grew up, I learned to make them by helping him, and somehow, as an adult, it has now become my job to make them for Christmas morning.
Baking Christmas cookies with my mom will always be one of my favorite memories. I loved rolling out the dough and helping her cut out cookies.
Baking is very therapeutic for me and I love making baked goods with my 6 year old daughter, Kylie. It gives us much needed Mommy-Daughter time. :) Every time we’re in the kitchen together is a moment I truly cherish.
I have six brothers and sisters and one my dearest memories is all of us in the kitchen helping my big sissies mix and bake our family’s favorite, carrot cake…yumm!!
My favorite childhood memory of baking is sitting at the kitchen counter making pulla – a Finnish sweet bread – with my sister who had just come home from her study abroad in Finland. We took the freshly risen, cardamom scented bread dough and rolled it like playdough while we enjoyed each others company.
I always love baking Greek desserts with my sweet daughter. We have a great time and love eating the results. We also have a very bad habit of making brownies after 11pm….oh but they are so good to lose a little sleep over!!
This past summer my 9 year old son and I made Spritz cookies for his 4H project. He picked yellow and red – Iron Man’s colors. We did the usual flowers, but he insisted on trying the stick figure disk in the cookie gun. Then he wanted to put the yellow and red dough in at the same time. They were not cool enough for him, so he swirled the colors together before he put the dough in the gun. They came out great. He added a mini red M&M for the arc reactor. He got a blue ribbon on his entry and I learned to be more creative with my cookies!
Hello Dah-ling!
Memories are our history and I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have my memories of being up all night before thanksgiving, making a huuuuge box of cookies for my then-boyfriend now-husband and watching my grandmother maker her carrot cake.
Memories are too sweet.
One of my fondest baking memories is making fudge brownies or chocolate chip cookies with my grandma. It was back in the early 80s and as a kid I would was so excited to sit in front of the oven window (not everyone’s oven had this feature) and watch the magic happen while licking the batter bowl. Classic….
Those pies look yummy!
My favorite baking memory would have to be scooping out cookie dough from a tube when I was a little girl. Not from scratch but it was the first time I discovered how delicious freshly made cookies were. They didn’t look perfect but they were delectable.
Baking is fun. It is good when you start to bake cookie, although everyone think cookie is simple, however, I still cannot make the perfect one, of course, I will keep trying for that. I love cupcakes, enjoy to see them raise and it is fun to decorate.
Growing up I loved helping my mom bake and assemble the Christmas plates we’d take to neighbors and friends. Home made caramels, fudge, snickerdoodles, peanut butter blossoms, sugar cookies, etc. A fun tradition that I’m happy to continue!
When i was a little girl i would go to my grandma’s house and we’d bake all kinds of cookies but most of all we’d bake her famous “cornflake cookie” which consisted of cornflakes, chocolate chips, raising and all sorts of other things. by the time we got the cookies in the over, half of the raw dough would be in our tummys!
It may not be very original, but my favorite baking memory is making Spritz cookies at Christmas with my mom. The sprinkles were always my department, and I took that job very seriously! I’m looking forward to pulling out that cookie gun this December and sharing those memories with my toddlers (I have a feeling they’ll be into the sprinkles too :) ).
My grandma was not a big baker, but my mom sure was! When I was a kid we planted an apple tree in the back yard and waited years for it to start producing apples. I was so disappointed in how sour they were though, after waiting so long for them grow. My mom, however, knew what to do, so we made apple pies. And of course, the best apple pies ever, since we had grown the apples. After that, I was always thrilled when the apples were ready to be picked, we could get a few pies each year from that little tree.
I love baking with my family so I have plenty of memories going to my grandmothers house to bake fresh bread and special baked goods named Freuni, always delicious and we usuallyy have to taste test too! =)
My favorite memory is baking cookies in the kitchen with my mom! Mmm :)
I love love love baking and I’m so excited to start baking again! (and thats with pumpkin and cinnamon!) I have this one mixer from the 1970’s (I looked up the model) I found at a antique store a few months ago and it works! It’s so cool!
I used to spend a week or two at my grandmoms every summer and we would bake every day. One of my favorites was cut-out cookies…she had the best collection of cookie cutters and my favorite was the cow. I would make blue cows and then shape some dough into pink udders and stick them on! :)
I always will remember making six – seven stullen with my grandma, so that each family had a stullen for Christmas morning. :-)
My favorite memory is with my Mom and her Christmas baking! She would make Italian Doughnuts – hot and dripping with honey, Italian Pizelles, snickerdoodles, nut tassies, and cream puffs. My job was to fill the cream puffs,and of course sample all the goodies before she packed them up for Christmas gifts!
My favorite baking memory is spending the day before thanksgiving with my grandma in preparation for the big day. My dad would dive me over to my grandparents the night before and I got to spend the night, ditch school, and was schooled in pie making. Each year we would make at least 2 DOZEN pies to eat or give to neighbors. I cherish that special time I got to spend with my grandma.
Making Curious George cookies with my two young grandsons.
My Grammy invited my 2nd grade class to her house to learn about baking bread and grinding wheat. I remember feeling so proud to have her as my Grammy and loved that she read us Little Red Hen while the bread was baking.
My baking memory is also pecan-related. My nana was a very special person, always giving and positive despite the hardships she had faced in her life. She spoiled us grandkids rotten and taught me to love baking and crafting. In memory of her, I make her pecan tassie (miniature tart/pie) recipe every Thanksgiving. I’m not one for baking a recipe twice, but that is one recipe I will always make for when the family gathers together.
My favorite baking memery would have to be any Christmas dinner at my parents house, where everyone uses the kitchen at once to prepare all the food, while I fight for oven use to bake my Christmas cookies.
My favorite baking memory was making the Cuban version of doughnuts with my grandmother. She passed away two weeks after, but during this period of baking we made the traditional snack for Christmas dinner. She taught me tricks of her trade and she gave me life lessons. Those doughnuts meant more to me after I realized how much she taught me. Ironically these doughnuts are shaped like the infinity sign, so I hope that means she will be with me forever.
I used to bake quite a bit with my ex boyfriend’s son. That was our thing to do together. I particularly remember the times we baked Christmas cookies for Santa.
My mom always baked a lot at Christmas. She would make dozens on different treats to pass out to the neighbors. I always loved the suckers she would make and ‘helped’ pour them so that my favorite shapes would end up with the flavor that I liked!
My favorite baking memory is making a beautiful braided herb bread with two of my close friends in high school.
The first time I baked with my daughter, her sitting in her bouncy seat. She must have been 6-8 months. I would describe everything I was doing, and she would smile and bounce enthusiastically.
My 14 year old son has recently taken a liking to baking, so we are making memories now. We research recipes, gather our stuff and bake. It’s fun teaching him the tricks of the trade.
My favorite baking memories are of the amazing and creative birthday cakes that my mom would make me from scratch each year. I had a beautful barbie cake one year, a hot air balloon cake another year.. I remember always feeling very special and very proud of my mom. I have so much fun making cakes for my own son’s birthday now, knowing that I am making him feel as special as my mom made me feel.
My memory is about learning how to make Fig Cookies from the owners of an Italian restaurant I use to work for many years ago. They take all day, but the recipe makes tons, and the time was well worth it!
One of my favorite memories is baking cookies with my Grandma, she usually burned them but that made it funny!(= I usually make baked goods for presents too.
My favorite memory is baking Christmas cookies with my mom every year!
I have very fond memories of waiting for brownies to finish and anxiously waiting for them to cool from the oven. They were and still are my very favorite thing to bake with my mom.
My mother worked long hours as the primary provider in our family. During the weekends that she did not have to go to the office, we would gather in the kitchen to experiment with new recipes! She taught me to make creamy baked custards, savory quiches, breads and so many other recipes that I now enjoy sharing with my family.
I loved making Christmas cookies with my mom and sisters growing up. We especially loved decorating the sugar cookies with icing and candies.
My favorite cooking memory was cooking with my daughter. She and i both share a passion for baking.
When I was little, I used to help my grandmother make carrot cakes. Everybody loves her carrot cake so she makes them a lot. My part of the system was always grating the carrots.
My favorite baking memory is actually my first baking memory. The December I was in third grade I got mononucleosis (we still don’t know how) and had to stay home from school for a month. My dad stayed home with me most of the time and since I couldn’t really go out, but was bored with sitting and watching TV all day- he had us make cookies. We made two or three different kinds of dough one day and then made a different cookie with the dough each day. I’ve pretty much made cookies every Christmas since and now I usually make 12-15 different varieties each year!
My favorite baking memory was thanksgiving a few years ago. I got to bake with my mother and my daughter.
My favorite memory was actually a kitchen disaster. The first year we were married, my husband and I attempted to make peanut butter fudge. It was somehow sand-like and completely inedible, but we had so much fun together in the kitchen…maybe we should give fudge another go.
My favorite memory is baking Christmas cookies with my mom. She and I would make sugar cookies with icing designs, almond cresants, and thumbprint cookies. But we also always made choc chip cookies because those were my favorite and she knew I would not want the other cookies. Now that I see how busy the Holiday season can get it makes me smile even more that she took the time just for me and my favorite cookies!
My favorite baking memory is something I called “Cupcake Wednesday” in college. A friend or friends and I would bake some kind of cupcake we had been dreaming about or saw on TV or online and then eat way too many after.
My favorite baking memory was with my grandma on thanksgiving.
I remember the first time I made cupcakes for my husband after we were married a few months. He said he didn’t like cupcakes. So made cupcakes I knew would change his mind. Now he loves my cupcakes and requests them often.
Helping to braid my Dad’s bread was always fun. He was a stay-at-home father until I was 10 or 11, and in that time he sort of perfected the art of breadmaking–everything from sourdough (for daily use) to rye and cardamon breads for fancy occasions. While he was great at sailing and tying any sort of knot in rope, he was helpless when it came to braids, whether in my hair or his bread, so I always got to help make the perfect loaves. Of course, Dad’s real specialty had nothing to do with baking, and everything to do with his mother’s recipe for Swedish pancakes (plattar). Yum!
Mom wasn’t out of the picture either; she could (and can) whip up a baked dessert like nobody’s business. “Blueberry Boy Bait”, apple cake, lemon squares, good old fashioned chocolate cake, cookies, brownies, you name it, she’ll make it. My favorite part with anything chocolate was and still is licking the spoon, salmonella be darned.
Baking up sweet memories with my boys at Christmas time. When they were little they could not help a lot and honestly made me nutso but now I look so forward to spending that time with them in the kitchen.
My favorite memories are with my Mom who taught me how to bake at a very early age. She would pull a chair up to the counter and let me do most of the work. I thought that I was really grown when she let me use the mixer (with her very close mind you).
Making Bobby Flay’s Pumpkin Bread Pudding for Thanksgiving a couple years ago. It was a 3 day event which included my husband and our 2 children. It was worth it…..so yummy! I hope we have the time this year to make it again. :)
My favorite baking memory is making bread with my mom. I started when I was five and have been baking ever since.
My favorite baking memory was a few christmases ago when my sister came home from college. we made whoopie pies and they were delicious.
My favorite baking memory is when I was little, my family would travel from southern WI to central MN for Christmas every year. We went to my Great Grandma’s house for Christmas dinner and all the ladies would be in the tiny kitchen baking yummy treats! Cookies, cakes, pies, torts, and so many bars and brownies! It makes me hungry just remembering it!
One of my favorite memories was when my nanny used to let me help her make her mac n’ cheese, she always let me put in the extra cheese. I use her recipe still to this day!
Every holiday, my three children and I make food crafts and give ourselves permission to make a huge mess and be silly together. My favorite was our first giant gingerbread house we made together. Our last name piped on the roof in the “snow”, and watching them create and pelt eachother with candy was a memory that has been permanently engrained in my head.
My favorite baking memory is of my Nana preparing desserts during the holidays. I didn’t like pies, so she’d take the extra dough, roll it out, and we’d sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon. She’d set aside these pieces just for me :)
I still recall making stuffing with my grandfather at our house when I was little. He didn’t cook much, but he was the master stuffing maker. And, yes, we put it in the bird back when that was still “safe.”
It would be baking pumpkin pies at the holidays. We loved them and waited all year for them. I was so happy when I was old enough to make them. Still make them for my family and my son loves them.
Every year since we were about 10, I would stay the night at my friends house the night of/before black Friday. In order to get us exited for all the Christmas shopping festivities to come, me, my friend, and her mom would bake christmas cookies. We would use Christmas cookie cutters like trees and candy canes and santas and bake sugar cookies. We would then decorate them for hours. We probably bake around 100 cookies and then wrap them and give them to friends and family.
I remember making snickerdoodles with my grandfather. He is the reason I love baking today. I still can’t seem to duplicate those cookies either. They were delicious!
My favorite baking memory is watching my grandmother make wedding cakes.
I bet you miss your Granny so much! My science teacher called them boogers! But, I like roosters better.
I remember making dressing for Thanksgiving with my Mom and Grma in a huge bowl and wanting to eat it before it was ever cooked….it always smelled so good. All that celery and onion and breadcrumbs……Yum. My Grma has been gone now for several years and sure miss her.
My favorite baking memory has to be getting all of the women in the family together and mixing dough, then making all the cookies for Christmas in one day. We usually make about 8 different kinds. My mom has carried on the tradition of making the traditional Swedish cookies at Christmas and uses my Grandma’s original presses and rollers to make them. What fun and great photo ops!
Baking cookies for santa with my sister on Christmas Eve, lovely messy memories.
For my entire life my mom and I have stayed up late making cookies in the days leading up to Christmas. As an adult, it’s now kind of sad when most of them are finished by the time my family and I get there. But on the plus side, they’re ready to eat!
My favorite baking memory was with my grandfather. He used to sell a Filipino dessert called babingka (a cake made with rice flour and coconut milk) to local businesses. He would set up in the kitchen, armed with his container of batter, small round pans, banana leaves, and cheese and bake these cakes for hours every day. It was always fun to help him out after school. The best part was when we got to eat one fresh from the oven!
I totally agree that baking, especially during the holidays, is a wonderful way to keep alive memories and traditions of loved ones who’ve passed. For Christmas I make my grandmother’s Italian cookies with my daughter and it helps her feel connected to her great-grandmother, whom she never had a chance to meet in person.
My favorite baking memory is when I’d help my mom bake cakes as a child. My job was always to grease the pans with crisco using plastic bags and then flour them. I loved feeling like I was contributing to the end result.
My memory is a funny one! My mother baked and decorated cakes when I was young. I loved to help her make the frosting in her big mixer. One time while we were making the frosting, she let me add the powdered sugar, but warned me to hang on good to the bag. Well, somehow I let the bag slip into the beaters, and it tangled round and round them, making a very frosting-y mess. Mom doesn’t often make those cakes, but when she does and I am over visiting, that story ALWAYS comes up. It gives us a good laugh!
My elder son loved helping in the kitchen, so I kept a stool in there for him to stand on, and he had his own apron. I fondly remember him learning to break the eggs and tipping in the ingredients I measured. He still likes to prepare food in his own home.
Every year for my mom’s birthday my sister and I attempt to make her a Spumoni cake from scratch. Every year without fail we mess it up. One year we forgot the sugar in the frosting. Another year we looked at the recipe above instead of the one below and ended up doubling ingredient. You would think that after all these years we would be able to pull off the cake, sadly we can’t. But we persist because it’s my moms favorite cake. So each year all my famiy gathers together to celebrate my mom and eat really bad cake! It’s a awesome tradition! :)
The family recipe for sugar cookies is reserved exclusively for Christmas cookies and the old recipe I ever use that calls for almond extract. The smell of the almond in the dough is exactly what Christmas and the holidays smell like to me!
My favorite memory is baking cookies with my mother and sister every night leading up to our big party on Christmas Eve. We would bake thousands to package and give away to every guest who came through the door– which was unpredictable, because we just called it an open house and let anyone and everyone join our family for the night. We always made the old standards– chocolate chip pecan, oatmeal butterscotch, etc., but we always threw in a wild card each year. One time it was almond crescents, then jam thumbprints, and my favorite was Italian rainbow cookies. I learned to love baking because of these moments.
My mom and dad raised me and my siblings on chocolate cake for breakfast. When other (most??) household uttered the late-night phrase, “OH!, I’ve got to run to the store for a box of cereal for breakfast in the morning!!”, my mom said, “OH! I’ve got to bake a cake for breakfast in the morning!!”
It was a very hard habit to break. :)
My favorite baking memory was always started around Thanksgiving & kept going through the month of December. As a kid, she would always have me in the kitchen with her helping make everything. We’d start out with full size pumpkin-caramel pecan pies, then onto mini pumpkin bites, pumpkin bread, tea time tassies (mini pecan pie bites), home-made fudge, carrot cake & cookies galore. As we got into Christmas & as I got older through the years – we incorporated more “advanced” recipes & made a special day of it, since as I got older I moved away from home. We’d make home-made chocolate truffles, fancy cheesecakes and fancy creme’ foilled cakes/cupcakes, etc.
This is always the highlight of my year, knowing that even though I don’t have lots of days from Thanksgvign into Christmas- filled with baking with my Mom…I alteast have 1 special day set aside to relive those childhood memories & be a kid licking the spoon & bowl all over again.
My grandmother taught me how to make brownies– the simplest thing a small child could make. We would melt the butter and the chocolate squares, stir in the sugar, flour, nuts, and flavoring, and presto– delicious things in 30 minutes. Still think of her when I bake anything.
My favorite memories are the ones I’ve been making with my kids. For the past couple of years we have been baking cookies for the entire family, and and deliver them, with their Christmas pictures. It takes three time longer to make the cookies, but they live every minute and so so I!
My mother would have open houses around Christmas inviting hundreds of people. The three of us girls were the little helpers. At times I hated it but it’s probably what led me to be the baker/entertainer I am today!
My favorite memories will absolutely include holiday baking with my mom, sisters and nieces! It has become a family tradition that I hope lasts a lifetime!
My favorite baking memory is of my sister and I making pumpkin pie with no recipe at all, and totally messing it up! :)
My favorite baking memory is how it all started for me- we picked apples from the orchard, cut them up and put them in my very first homemade pie – crust and all. I felt so proud and the pie was the best I’d ever tasted! I’ve since made many pie and cakes and yummy treats for my family, but I’ll never forget the pie that gave me the confidence!
Learning to make homemade bread with my mom when I was 8 or 9 years old. 1966 or 67
My sister and I used to make soft pretzels every weekend, and I loved the Sundays my dad would gather us together to make caramel popcorn or Indian fry bread.
More recently, my sisters and I enjoy trying out old recipes of our mom’s, who died when we were very young.
I have this huge family, and finding gifts for everyone is one of the hardest thing I have ever had to do. A couple years ago I decided to make Christmas cookies for everyone as gifts, because who doesn’t like cookies? I love to bake, but had never made the attempt to bake the amount of cookies I planned to bake. It was a disaster. It took the entire day. There were many cookie casualties, and I failed… big time. This sounds like a terrible memory, but in it’s own way the one of the very best baking memory I have. I was seventeen when I made the decision to make those cookies. Even when I wanted to pull my hair out, I was still having fun. I still make Christmas cookies. A lot less than that first time, but they hold a special place in my heart, and in my families belly.
My favorite memories involve baking in my grandmothers crowded kitchen. We made peppernuts each year, and I remember my grandfather rolling out the dough even up to the year he died. So much laughter!
My favorite memory of baking… well my mom and I ever year made Cornflake treats. Kinda like the Rice Krispies marshmellow treats but with coenflakes we colored them green and made wreaths. For the bows we use red licorice, and hot cinnamon candys for the berries. We made a large one. And Bakerella you love this we made small mini wreaths as well for school and gifts. I make them with my children as well. I think I like the cornflake treat better than the rice krispies still to this day.
My fav memory was making homemade cinnamon rolls with my grandmother (Grandma Daisy!) from scratch. They were the best cinnamon rolls ever. I remember asking her what’s the difference between a “dash” versus a “pinch”. I know she told me, but I was too young to understand. And l still don’t know the difference. LOL. Unfortunately, no one thought to write down her recipe, and now it is gone forever.
Favorite Baking memory happens each Christmas with both kids home, making sticky buns the night before for Christmas morning (when they come to the gift unwrapping ceremony… hot and gooey and OH, so cinnamony! The kids hovering around the cutting board just waiting till I cut the uncooked dough… just waiting for a bit or two. Yes they help with the prep, but most of all, I love having them just chatting between themselves and letting me listen in. Music to my ears.
My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas Sugar cookies with my mom and sister every year!
Ooooh…I LOVE baking! So many memories…love my mom’s whole wheat bread piping hot out of the oven cut into big thick slices and smothered with butter…baking Christmas goodies to take around to the neighbors. Up to our elbows in flour and frosting! YUMMMMM!
My family requests me to make creme brulee every single year for Christmas. I like to experiment with different desserts every year but my family says, “Yeah, sure you can make that too but you have to make creme brulee or else you won’t get any food!”
My favorite baking memory was just a few weeks ago. I was making cookies to surprise my boyfriend for his birthday. I was at my grandma’s house and it was like a baking shop. everything I needed for 3 different types of cookies she already had. I love baking with my Grandma.
Baking with my daughter for the first time. We were making brownies and cookies for the family Christmas party. She loved licking the spoon after we where all done. I loved how proud she was, telling everyone that she had helped me.
My favorite memory of baking is with my grandmother. When I was little we would always make cookies, cakes, brownies and whatever else we felt like. Now that I’m grown up and my grandmother doesn’t bake much, I still bake for the family remembering the times when we would bake together. I use her recipes and it’s like she baked it herself.
My most memorable baking moment was the first time that my two daughters and I baked Cake Pops for the first time and after eating like 10, my 6 year old looked at me with a chocolate covered face and said “I Love Bakerella”!! LOL!! I thought that was too funny!! Thank you for all the great memories that you have helped us create with your awesome recipes and ideas.
Easy. Thanksgiving 1990.
My Army Reserve unit had just been mobilized the week before, both my husband and room mate were Army Reserve and my two best friends were Air Force. We had no idea if we’d every share another holiday for the foreseeable future, or even see each other again. So we decided to have a small ‘family’ Thanksgiving by each of us making one dish that said’ Family Holidays’.
We ended up going street rat crazy to the point that we ran out of room just to put stuff on the table. I made fresh dinner rolls, pumpkin, apple and mincemeat pies and we shared turkey, ham and all the rest of the trimmings.
Working in the kitchen elbow to elbow and sharing that meal was one of the most wonderful times of my life- surrounded by good friends, good food and love.
My daughters (15 &12), husband and I make cut out cookies each year for Christmas. Last year we couldn’t stop laughing as the kids and Dad turned innocent gingerbread men and teddy bear shaped cookies into wrestlers, zombies, smurfs and other non-Christmas characters. Although not the cookies you’d see on the cover of a book at William’s Sonoma, we definitely made memories and they were quite the conversation starter when Grandma & Grandpa came to visit!
With my grandma…she made these great peanut butter bites, delicious! Now I make them, mostly during the holidays.
My favorite baking memories are every Christmas when everyone starts grabbing the sugar cookies to take home. I always make plenty so no one gets left out.
My favorite baking memory is of christening my new apartment with its first batch of cookie. t’s great to reflect on food memories, when and where they happened, and how you’ve grown and changed since those times.
Every year around Christmas my grandma and I would make Italian Honey Balls, sweet dough rolled into balls and fried then we would coat them in a honey based syrup and arrange them into the shape of a tall cylinder shape tree and sprinkle colored nonpareils all over. We would made a ton of the stacked trees and set out through her neighborhood delivering the treats to all her neighbors. The best part was eating them of course, so yummy! I now make them with my son (5) and hand them out to our neighbors, brings back such wonderful memories!
Making pound cakes with my grandmother. She is gone now, but everytime I bake one, I think of her
Baking with my grandkids is always delightful! Recently, my 2 year-old wondered why we had snow all over us after a slight flour mishap?!
Learning to bake challah with my rebbetzin. It got me over my fear of using yeast.
Growing up, the holidays were my Mom’s thing. She baked and decorated and made everything memorable. My favorite memory though, is of making Pizzelles with my Mom and sister at Christmas. Part of our family recipe was to add a few shots of Anisette in the batter. Unbeknownst to my Mom, my Dad would sneak less than a half a shot of Anisette to my sister and I, every year. Even though the baking was Mom’s thing, this part was a wonderful little secret Holiday tradition that was all Dad.
Ever since I was about 6 years old, I was helping my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. Every Thanksgiving we would be the kitchen, simultaneously baking pies and cooking side dishes. There was always so much learning, and love, that took place in that kitchen. Something about my memories of the 3 generations working together to produce something wonderful (and tasty!) always sticks with me. I am so thankful every year that I have such wonderful holiday memories!
My favorite baking memory was from when I was a kid, making chocolate chip cookies with my grandmother. My grandma had 7 kids so was accustomed to cooking for an army. We would make dozens and dozens and DOZENS of chocolate chip cookies and package them into tins to send to the rest of the family. When I would return home, I loved opening the tin and pulling out a cookie from between the waxed paper sheets… I have continued her tradition of waxed paper sheets between layers of cookies, but I must admit, I am not as disciplined as she was because I do occasionally sneak a spoonful of cookie dough before it hits the pan! :-)
My mom used to bake cookies with us when we would come home from school in the afternoons. I loved snitching as much dough as I could ;) Then we would sit and dunk our cookies in milk and talk about our days.
Every baking memory I have from childhood involves my Grandma. She would let me help her bake pies and give me my own dough to roll out and make pie crust cinnamon rolls with. They were so simple and delicious! I could never make them that good again! I have wonderful memories of her in the kitchen, she was amazing!
All of my most memorable baking experiences were with my grandmother who passed away when I was 8 (I’m now 29). My favorite memory is the time we cooked a layered coconut cake. The cake started falling completely apart, so as a solution, my grandmother stuck forks throughout the cake to hold it together! It might not have been the prettiest cake ever but boy was it delicious! I miss her so very much!!!
My children love to help me bake and everytime I said I was going to bake, one of them would grab the big container of sugar and one would grab the flour. It rarely made it to the counter in one piece but they were just so cute trying to carry the containers. Then they would run and hide on the stairs because the hated the sound of the mixer. They so wanted to help, but could’t get over the noise. Now they turn on the mixer themselves so they grow up quickly
I have extremely fond memories of my mom and I baking chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. Sometimes my sister would help out, but most of the times, she played outside. Now, I bake the same recipe with my three girls!
My grandma baked ALL the time. She would have something in her house every time I went to visit. My favorite she would have a lot are the lemon bars.
For the past ten years or so, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, my parents and I bake nut roll – our family’s favorite holiday treat. We spend the whole day baking, laughing and enjoying each other. We’ll be doing it again this year – my dad will be 90 and my mom, almost 84.
Cutout cookies were always my favorite but my mom didn’t want to make them very often because she didn’t want to wash and dry the cookie cutters. Now when I send her some, she’s super impressed I went to all that trouble just to make cookies.
My favorite memory is baking Christmas cookies with my mother every year since I was a child :)
I remember making “Buckeyes” (chocolate peanut butter balls) with my mom every Christmas. I love making them every year as it reminds me of being a kid and helping my mom.
I totally agree… The last months of the year really are the best time to bake! I think I like baking so much mainly because I love Christmas and the two go so well together.
My favorite baking memory, besides making pie with my mom, is not actually a time when we baked edible treats. One Christmas, my mom made salt dough that we rolled and cut and stamped to make ornaments for our tree. It was so fun! My mom made a topiary ornament that is 3D and I still hang it on my own tree today. It is such a special memory and I can’t wait to have my own kids so I can do that with them. And maybe make pie afterward… :)
Baking at the holidays always means time with mom and grandma. When I was a child they would make the Norweigian cookies, every single year – and every single year my mother will burn herself. Its the time together and then sneaking bites of the dough and bits and pieces of nuts.
My favorite baking momory is helping my Mom make apple butter and ketchup in the oven. I can still remember that aroma and there was always homemade bread to sample the apple butter. That has been 55+ years ago!
I remember my grandmother making pies and then taking the time to make cinnamon-sugar roll-ups. YUM. I remember my paternal grandparents making donuts every year on Christmas Eve and walking into their house and smelling them fres and ready to be delivered. And I remember making sugar cookies with my mom for every major holiday…basic shapes and simple frosting.
My dad has a few specialties and I loved baking with him. Pizza was the best!
My favorite baking memories have been all the cookie and cake recipes that I’ve ruined since moving to Denver. Trying to bake at a high altitude is challenging!
My favorite memories are the last 9 years making gingerbread houses with my five grandchildren. They are already talking about it for this year.
My fondest memory is making yummy gorditas de nata with my grandma.
I remember baking, as a kid, with my aunt who was not the best baker but it was always fun. I remember being covered in frosting one year because she turned on the hand mixer before putting it into the bowl. Aaahhh sweet memories)
When my daughter was little, and the nieces and my nephew were little, I gathered all 4 of them to bake sugar cookies for Santa. We used cookie cutters and they decorated them. Now, my 4 year old granddaughter and I make cupcakes for everyone every time we get together. They live an 8 hour drive away, but every time I visit, she says can we make cupcakes grandma??? and of course we do.
I never saw my aunt much after she and my uncle got divorced. We kept making plans but they’d always fall apart, until we finally stumbled on something we both enjoyed: baking! She had me to her new house a week or so before Christmas, and we jammed out to the 24-hour Christmas music on the radio while making apple pies, candy cane cookies and oreo truffles. My family came over for dinner that night and had bits of our creations for dessert – which they loved!
Favorite baking memory are the all-day Christmas bake-a-thons that I’d have with my mom and sisters. We’d usually complain about it and/or burn at least one tray of cookies because we’re all very forgetful, but they were usually fun days. Thank you for the giveaway!!!