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Baking Sweet Memories

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.

Pecan Pies

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.

Mini Pies

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
Yield: 3 pies or 32 mini pies

Mama's Pecan Pies

Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes

Ingredients

  • 16 oz. pecans
  • 2 sticks margarine
  • 16 oz. package light brown sugar
  • 1 heaping tablespoon (serving tablespoon, not measuring spoon) self-rising flour
  • 16 oz. bottle Karo light corn syrup
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla
  • 6 eggs
  • 3 regular size (not deep dish) frozen pie crusts - or make your own (enough for 3)

Instructions

  1. Melt margarine in the microwave for about 2 minutes or until melted and set aside.
  2. Prepare your pecans. Remove any unwanted dark brown pieces from the pecan crevices and shake out pecan crumbs in a colander.
  3. Place brown sugar in a large bowl. Work out any lumps with the back of a spoon. If the brown sugar is too hard, you can loosen it up in the microwave. Heat it for a few seconds and it will be fine.
  4. Add a heaping serving tablespoon of self-rising flour and stir until the flour disappears into the brown sugar.
  5. Add the bottle of corn syrup. Then add 1 serving tablespoon of vanilla and stir until thoroughly combined.
  6. Add melted margarine. Fold carefully into the mixture so it doesn’t splatter. Fold until the margarine is thoroughly worked in and disappears.
    In a separate bowl, crack open six eggs. Remove the “roosters” and loosely beat the eggs with your spoon.
  7. Fold the eggs into the pie mixture until they disappear.
  8. Add pecans and stir until completely coated.
  9. Remove three pie shells from the freezer at this point and check for cracks. (If you do have a crack, thaw and knead the crack together and refreeze.)
  10. Pour the mixture evenly into the three shells. You’ll probably have a little bit leftover in the bowl. Tap tops with a spoon to check consistency and make sure there is the same amount in each pie. Redistribute pecans if necessary to make equal.
  11. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour at 350. Cook pies until they swell and then fall. At that point they are done.
  12. Remove and cool for about three hours to set. Store on the counter or in the refrigerator depending on how you like your pie. Or eat right away and really warm - the pie just won't hold it's shape at this point but it will be amazing.
  13. For mini pies: chop pecans, use mini frozen pie shells, removing them from the freezer as needed and bake in three batches on a baking sheet for about 35 minutes each. I’m guesstimating the time. Watch them and make sure they are done.
Enjoy!

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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

  • 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!


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6,453 comments on “Baking Sweet Memories”

  1. My dad loved to bake with us, and I loved making pizzelles with him every Christmas. But my favorite memory was the time that we were baking oatmeal cookies, and we forgot the flour. The cookies spread out all over the baking sheet, and we ended up with what we named oatmeal lace candy. It was actually quite a yummy mistake!

  2. I’d say helping my mom bake Christmas cookies — actually, waiting impatiently while SHE baked the cookies, and then begging to help frost and decorate them!

  3. my favorite memory has got to be either baking christmas cookies with my sisters or one halloween i was selling cupcakes online for a dysautonomia support group and i might have over estimated how many i could handle as a novice baker. 14 dozen in 12 hours was slightly difficult.

  4. As a kid/young adult I would make an extra-special, over-the-top birthday cake for my sister each year. Just her. It started my love of baking.

  5. My Dad and I used to make the stuffing together every Thanksgiving Eve. It was my job to crumble the cornbread :)

  6. My favorite memory is learning how to bake my Grandmother’s amazing biscuits. Everyone always says I make the best biscuits and I know I use her recipe and technique, but they will never taste as good as hers. It has to be that extra special touch of love she always put in them just for me!

  7. My favorite baking memory is staying in the kitchen for almost a whole entire day making pies from scratch at my grandmom’s. My grandfather was so excited and ended up eating most of the pies! hahaha

  8. I too have a wonderful pecan pie recipe given to me by a former co-worker who was a wonderful cook but is now in her heavenly home probably baking up a storm. I will have to compare the two recipes, as they look really similar. Thanks for telling us your story….it was heartwarming!

  9. I loved it when my new roommate moved in and I noticed she had a giant cupcake cake mold just like I did! We baked a giant cupcake cake that weekend and baked cookies and cake pops galore while we lived together, until I moved out to live with my boyfriend. He just doesn’t appreciate the red, giant cupcake silicon mold like my old roommate did!!

  10. The best baking memories I have are the ones with my mother. We’ve shared laugher, tears, and heart-to-heart conversations. After every baking marathon, we’d take whatever we made and just drop them off with someone – just to brighten their day.

    It’s something I’ve carried with me. Even today, I’ll have baking days with my son and daughter.. Even if they are too young to remember these moments, I will always remember the flour on their faces and the look on their faces when they “share” their baking day foods with Daddy’s co-workers.

  11. My fondest baking memories are from baking Christmas cookies with my father when I was younger. He would reach for the old, worn Betty Crocker Cooky Cookbook and a couple others, spread them out on one side of the counter, and we would get to work gathering all of the ingredients and baking, decorating and “taste-testing” our creations. I hope to be able to recreate that with my own family and friends some day.

  12. My favorite baking memory is baking chocolate chip cookies for the first time with my mom!

  13. My favorite baking memory was baking and decorating sugar cookies and then taking them to public servants like librarians and the fire dept.

  14. My favorite baking memory is my entire family, granmother, aunts, cousing and some close friends getting together every weekend from January to March to bake over 1000 lbs of flour into Italian cookies for a St. Joseph Altar on his feast day March 19. It is an old catholic/italian tradition. We did this every year for most of my life. Unfortunately we are not able to continue the tradition since most of the cousins are spread across the south and all the aunts are no longer with us. I still do alot of baking for christmas.

  15. Baking pineapple upside down cake with my grandma when I was a kid. It’s one of my favorite things to bake when I miss her.

  16. I’ve always loved baking with my Mother, the best cook ever! Home made cookies, breads, pies, cakes; you name it. In an old yellow bowl with a rubber spatula. I would sit on the counter and wait, not very patiently, for my chance to lick both bowl and spatula. It was always a treat!!!

  17. In the last few years my niece and I have started baking the Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon rolls for family and friends for Thanksgiving morning. We drive them around town the night before Thanksgiving. This gives our family and friends something fun to wake up to on Thanksgiving day. I like it because it gives me lots of time to hang and chat with my niece while we make them. I hope she enjoys it too!

  18. It’s a tradition for my mom, sister and I to bake and decorate cookies around Christmas time. They’re a sugar cookie that have a hint of citrus in them. We use cookie cutters and decorate with colored egg washes, sprinkles and a citrusy icing. They’re delicious and so much fun to decorate. It wouldn’t be Christmas without them!

  19. Baking treats for my husband during the holidays is always my favorite way of showing him that I love him (which he always re-pays with a multitude of compliments :D)!

  20. My favorite baking memory would be baking cupcakes for my husband while our 5 month old sat in the high chair “helping” to surprise him for all the hard work he does so I can stay home :)

  21. Hey bakerella your awesome!! Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe!! I love the holidays I love baking and cooking during this time if year! My mom always hosted thanksgiving and made everything!! Now I’m trying to take on the tradition :-) so thanks for always sharing great recipes!

  22. Fall always means making my mom’s family cheese biscuit recipe. I can remember staying up late, grating cheese with an old hand grater and rolling the dough into long, round cheese logs. The smell of them baking was delicious!

  23. My favorite baking memory is knowing that every single year for each of our birthdays, my mom (who doesn’t love cooking) spends the entire day making German Chocolate Cake from scratch. She never fails. And it’s always perfect and delicious.
    Baking for someone really does make them feel special… your Grandma had it right!!

  24. My mother taught me to bake and cook at an early age and we spent lots of time together in the kitchen. Now that I have three children of my own, I am trying to pass on my love of baking to them. My boys ask nearly everyday to help me make something, whether it be cookies, muffins, breads, cakes, etc. and my heart sings to be able to share that time building memories with them.

  25. I made 2 cakes for my mom’s birthday. They were 8″ tall and 4″ wide with 3/4″ layers. I frosted them with pastel frosting and white trim. She still talks about them!

  26. A tradition at our house was that the kids (3) each made a Gingerbread house. What a mess!! LOL. They would set them on the hearth–and slowly, as the days went by- the candy on the houses would disappear. We also decorated sugar cookies…but, that’s another story.

  27. I don’t have a lot of memories baking while growing up. I’m working on making some with my son now. It’s funny how even though the cookies never come out quite right when he’s been helping, and tend to somehow end up with sprinkles even though I hate sprinkles, it’s still something that makes me happy. He just gets so excited, how can it not be a wonderful thing that the chocolate chip cookie is a horrid green and crunchy in all the wrong ways?

  28. When I was a new bride my hubby and I moved to a small Scandinavian town in Minnesota. Everyone was so welcoming and kind. I was invited to a lefse making event. We were all under 30 and didn’t know the first thing about making lefse, although some had watched their grandmothers make it.

    After several hours and several glasses of wine, we each proudly took home our sealed packages of lefse. It was after mountains of peeled potatoes, potato ricers and many attempts thrown in the trash can.

    That was 35 years ago, we still make lefse every Christmas; our technique has improved!

  29. I’ve always loved baking, since I was a little girl, but my best memories so far are probably making and decorating Christmas cookies with my great nephews :-) This year, they’re 8, 4 and 3!

  30. I loved baking Christmas cookies with my mom when I was younger…..we’d both wind up covered in flour…but the smell of homemade cookies was amazing. Now I bake cookies with my daughter, and we don’t end up covered in flour because, for some strange reason, she enjoys eating raw flour…

  31. My favorite memory is when Thanksgiving came around I was to short to see my grandmother cook so she would suit me on the counter to watch her. I learned everything from pecan pies to fried green tomatoes.

  32. My favorite baking memories are those with my mom during the holidays. The temps outside would be cool, and the kitchen would be hot. She would open up the windows to cool the place off. My brothers and uncles would come over to “test” the food straight out of the pots or the oven. She past away in October of last year, and now my family and I live in the house I grew up in. Now, I’m making memories with my kids in mom’s kitchen.

  33. I love to bake brownies and cookies. But my favorite baking memory doesn’t involve an oven at all. It is making mud pies with my best friend (for over 40 years now) in her mamaw’s back yard. Some of them were plain, just mud mostly. Others were quite elaborate, if we could manage to sneak in the hen house and get a couple of eggs to use. Or even better, climb to the top of Granddaddy’s sawdust pile where the very best sawdust was so we could “ice” our creations. And it didn’t hurt Denise’s little brother at all to eat one of our pies, we talked him into doing it several times.

  34. I loved making cookies at Christmas with my mom and now its a tradition with my girls. We spend an entire day during the holidays just making every cookie imaginable, We share them with friends and family.

  35. My favorite baking memory has to be the first time I made rice crispies with my son. We had more end up on him, the floor and the cat than actually went in the pan, but I wouldn’t have moved one single rice puff.

  36. My favorite baking memory was not baked… it was fried!

    Making homemade fried apple pies with my Nanny every apple season is the memory I look back on with the most smiles. =)

  37. I didn’t start cooking or baking until I was 23, but caught on very quickly. My favorite baking memory has been creating my own version of my grandmother’s classic apple pie. My grandfather is extremely critical of apple pie and after she passed I wanted to make the pie as an homage to her.

    It took 3 tries before I had the pie tasting and looking perfect. I brought it to Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house and anxiously awaited what my Grandfather thought of it. I was in total shock when he said “you did good, girl.” Not a man of many words and those were just the words i wanted to here.

    Thanks for the chance to win!

  38. My favorite baking memory is making Christmas cookies each year with my mom, aunt, cousin and grandmother. We made 4000+ cookies each year. Sadly, we ended the tradition a couple of years ago because my grandmother was too old to help, my aunt has cancer, and my cousin has MS.

  39. My baking memory is making Christmas cookies with my mom and grandma. In the South, there’s a cookie called lady fingers that are rolled in powdered sugar. Those are my favorite and always remind me of afternoons spent with the strong women in my life.

  40. My favorite baking memory is making pound cakes with my grandmother. She made a cake every Saturday for my grandfather. She didn’t own a mixer but had to mix it by hand. She would have loved to have a mixer like this.

  41. I didnt used to bake much i was living with my parents, but after getting married i love to bake to my husband…and he loves everything i make.

  42. My favorite baking memory is baking all the Christmas goodies every year. We make Christmas decorated sugar cookies, date nut balls, cheese straws, fudge, and lots more. It’s so much fun to spend the day in the kitchen with my family making memories.

  43. I remember as a child and lived with my grandparents for a short time and Grandpa baking biscuits in the woodstove. The kitchen was so warm and cozy and the smells were unbelievable. Whenever I smell biscuits I think of my grandpa.

  44. I always loved baking with my mom and sneaking cookie dough. Now I can’t wait to start baking with my little girl! :)

  45. Baking chocolate chip cookies for my family.

  46. My favorite baking memory will always be making my Grandma Rogers Fruitcake. She made it every year at Christmas and would soak it in her homemade wine. She always kept an apple in it to keep it moist. My mom, my daughter and I make it now since my Grandma passed away. Christmas wouldn’t be the same without her fruitcake.

  47. Favorite baking memory would be baking chocolate chip cookies before movie night at sleepovers! Those were fun!

  48. My favorite baking memory is making rappie pie which is a Canadian dish. It is basically a potato pie so not really baking in the true sense of the word, but it is still baked and is very labor intensive. My parent’s had 5 children and we would all help in the full day process. It is a great memory!

  49. Baking Christmas cookies with my mom. We would make hundreds, eat A LOT of them and then give some away too.

  50. Funny how my favorite memory is my Mom’s inability to bake anything without burning it or making it super crispy. She finally learned how to bake after we were all grown and moved out! She still blames it on the oven!! These days she LOVES to bake with her grandkids, and I am happy to say her baking has improved 110% and ais uch yummier!!

  51. My favorite memory is making sugar cookies with my Grandma. There is nothing at all out there that tastes just like them. Now that she’s gone, it makes me smile and think of her every time I make them with my own kids. Thanks Grandma! :)

  52. My best baking memory is when my Grandmother, who is now 96 years young would let me help her bake a pound cake every Saturday morning. The best piece of that cake was the first piece cut just after it was taken out of the oven. Today, that is still my favorite dessert!

  53. My favorite baking memory is making “Polish Bow Ties” with my Grandmother. Christmas baking always meant her famous chocolate chip and several other varieties but we all waited in anticipation for the Chrusciki. While they were *ok* the next day, they were really a treat to eat right out of the fry oil after a shake in a bag of powdered sugar. I still recall being amazed at how thin she was able to roll the dough.

  54. when i made cake pops for the first time. It was hard and fun at the same time. The hardest part was putting the candy coating on it.

  55. My favorite baking memory happens every year around Christmas! 6 years ago my sister and I started making and decorating Christmas Sugar Cookies the week before Christmas and we would give them to friends, family, and neighbors! This year I will be baking these cookies alone because my sister joined The Americorp program, but I could not be more proud of her!!

  56. My very favorite baking memory is making christmas fudge with my grandma. She makes the best fudge I have ever tasted, and her recipe is a hit with everyone we know! My grandma always included me and my siblings in making the fudge every Christmas, even when we were very young. When we helped out, we usually ate so much of the marshmallows and chocolate that the fudge wouldn’t set completely, but my grandma didn’t mind one bit. It was more important to her to make memories with her grandchildren than to make sure her fudge was perfect!

  57. Baking with my grandmother. She was so kind and patient with us, and she taught us well. I still make her date nut bread.

  58. One of my favorite baking memories is right after I started my blog and my sister and I got together in her kitchen and made an apple Danish braid. not only was it delicious it is still fun to think back to that day and the fun we shared and the baking addiction that resulted from those days of experimentation.

  59. Baking christmas cookies with my mom–we would bake hundreds on peanut butter kiss cookies and wrap them in saran wrap on paper plates, tie a bow, and give them to EVERYONE–the neighbors, the mailman, the guys who picked up our trash…

  60. Teaching my daughter how to make her favorite recipes. She’s getting married in March!

  61. Every year at Christmas, my mom hosts a cookie weekend. My sister in law, mother, myself and close family friends all show up at her house with cookie dough or recipes and we bake cookies all weekend. The kids love to help decorate the gingerbread and sugar cookies, which are must-haves every year. At the end of the weekend, we all take what we want home to give as gifts, set out for Santa, or just keep for ourselves. It’s so much fun to spend that time with people you love!!

  62. My favorite baking was around Christmas with all the italian cookies and the italian ‘little hat’ soup! My kids would probably say the best part of my baking was the smell when they came in the house off the bus and knew before they could see the chocolate chip cookies were cooling on the counter!

  63. Making pound cake with my Nanny as a very small girl and helping her shake the flour around the greased pan.

  64. When I was around the age of 7; I remember gathering my baking ingredients to bake along side my Grams (Grandmother) but being so young I would also have my trusted Easy-Bake oven to make my treats while Grandma worked on the “big people oven” to create her delicious mouth watering treats.

    And to this day I still own my original Easy-Bake, although I have advanced to using the “big people oven” now <3 childhood memories :-)

  65. The first time I tried baking bread… to my dismay I forgot the yeast! I remembered the next time, and it was delicious. :D

  66. Helping my Dad, a cook but not a baker yet, learn to make cookies. He was recuperating after a heart attack and needed to keep busy. He would drill me with questions, taking every bit of advice I had to offer. He’s 82 now, and having problems with his vision but when I called him on Saturday he was “trying” to bake chocolate chip cookies :)

  67. My favorite baking memory was testing and making a chocolate cake from scratch until it was perfect. It was the end of using a boxed chocolate cake mix. I really don’t care about chocolate… I love chocolate cake.

  68. My favorite baking memory is Christmas baking with my grandmother and sisters. Grandmother was in a wheelchair, but that didn’t stop her from running the show! We’d mix ingredients and she’d give us the thumbs up or down to continue our work. She always knew best!

  69. My favorite baking memory is when my daughter was at high school age that year after we settled down in California, it was the first time we baked Christmas cookies. We used hand mixer, we had so much fun adding food coloring to the dough, rolling the dough and cutting it with cookie cutter. We made a huge mess in the kitchen, flour on her face and on the floor. Finally the cookies turned out beautiful and delicious! We shared them with our family and friends.

  70. My favorite baking experience was the first time I baked with my mom. Fell in love with baking from that point!

  71. my favorite memory is baking sugar cookies with my lil girl for the first time. she was only 1 but she had a ball with the sprinkles!!

  72. When I was very young, my uncle and his girlfriend would make cookies when babysitting me and I would eat all the peanut M&Ms that were supposed to be in the cookies. They acted like it wasn’t okay, but they enjoyed watching me scarf down the M&Ms.

  73. Christmas time. Baking cookies with my mom and my sister and eating the cookie dough. :) After all the cookies where done we sit and watch all the Christmas movies together. We always save a cookie so the rest of the year we remember how much funwe had together. Christmas is my favorite holiday.

  74. For my graduation party favors and center piece displays, my aunty (my partner-in-sweets) and I made cow cake pops inspired by your cake pops! She was the one who introduced me to bakerella.com and I have loved your site and all of your posts ever since! We took almost an entire day to make about 200+ cow pops, and everyone loved them!! We also made mickey & minnie cake pops inspired by one of your posts!

  75. Getting together with my best friends at the “sorority house,” where at one point we all lived together, and baking everything we could possibly think of! We’ve dubbed it BAKE FEST! And we hold it the day before thanksgiving & the day before Xmas eve.

  76. I have a fond memory of baking cookies with my mother when I was a little girl. We’d bake sugar cookies, using cookie cutters and then we’d decorate them. Such good memories….

  77. Baking Russian tea cakes every year for Christmas with my mom…. Always a powdered sugary mess!

  78. My favorite memories was I was a kid and watching my mom making Christmas cookies! so beautiful with the silver dragees, and loved learning to use the cookie press! especially the green wreaths, & christmas trees we would make, and the cute little pressed camels, they were too cute!!

  79. Making chocolate chip cookies at Christmas time. My Mom would have to hide the batter because my sister and I would try to eat it before the baking began !!!!

  80. Baking anything brings back wonderful memories of my paternal grandfather. Part of the “Greatest Generation” and a WWII veteran, he was a hardworking, salt-of-the-earth, family loving man who held down many different kinds of jobs while raising his family. Many of them back-breaking. In my lifetime he was a professional baker. As I kid I remember being disappointed he owned a bread bakery. (At the time my siblings and I would have much preferred a cake bakery!) The few occasions I was able to go to Philadelphia and visit “the shop” really were events. I can still see my grandfather in his trademark white t-shirt and chinos lifting giant bags of flour to be poured into oversized mixers while Granny worked the front counter. I cannot think of any family gathering – or weekend visit – that didn’t include Pop-Pop arriving with giant Hefty bags filled with fresh pizza shells, loafs and rolls for everyone. My grandmother was a wonderful cook, and I often joke that I spend a great deal of my time in the kitchen trying to “channel” her cooking talents. But when I bake, when I bake my thoughts are always of Pop-Pop. xx

  81. My mom used to bake molasses cookies and they would just be coming out of the oven as we were coming home from school. Cookies still warm from the oven, a cold glass of milk, and a pile of dishes in the sink made for the best “how was your day?” conversations. So I guess my favorite memory isn’t so much about the baking as the eating! :)

  82. Wow! What an amazing giveaway! My holiday memory deals with being with my Norweigan Mor Mor and making lefse and kumla for Christmas dinner. While Mor Mor wouldn’t be caught dead with a mixer (95 years old and set in her ways) I’d be on cloud 9 and could use the gift card to get her a nice new potato masher….old school great grandmas lol

  83. My mom is a great baker, but could never get her coconut butter cake as good as my aunt’s. My brother and I always bugged my aunt to make the cake, but she said it was too much work to husk the coconut, then grate the meat so she could make fresh coconut milk and have grated coconut for the garnish. My brother and I offered to come up to the house and help with the coconuts so every so often, my brother, uncle, cousin, and I would go down to the basement and work on the coconuts. My uncle and cousin would husk the coconuts and crack them open so that my brother and I could grate them. We had to be careful not to get too close to the shell which would discolor the grated coconut. After that was done, it was hanging around aunty’s kitchen to hand-wash and dry all the utensils while we waited for our reward…a 9 X 13 pan of the best ever coconut butter cake with royal icing doused with fresh grated coconut!!!

  84. ive baked 2 times only in my life. First was when in high school for homemaking stuff and then when i volunteered at a nursing home when we made cookies for the party.

  85. One year at Christmas, I was busy for days making decorated sugar cookies to give as gifts. I left them on the kitchen table for the royal icing to dry as the final step. When I went back to check on them, I saw tiny little bite marks in about half of the cookies on the table! Of course I let out a scream and that’s when my 3yr old little boy (now 17 yrs old) came in and told me that he “didn’t eat the whole cookie, I only had a little bite” so he thought that would be better. I just had to laugh out loud!! I still laugh when I picture this scene in my head years later. :)

  86. I used to love baking cookies with my Nana we would bake dozens and dozens of cookies. We would get little tins and just give them to everyone. Now I bake holiday cookies with my kiddies and they love it I hope they pass the tradition on.

  87. I remember having a very stressful day and coming home to my 4 children. All they wanted to do was spend time with mommy. I figured the best way to do that was to help me make homemade chocolate chip cookies. They each did their share of measuring,mixing, & scooping. We had the best time together, it helped me relax, and they were they BEST chocolate chip cookies we ever made!

  88. I love baking with my mother in law every Christmas. We spend the whole day making lots of cookies and treats to share. And then we share a bottle of wine. Good Times.

  89. My favorite baking memory involves my sister. It was late at night and we were bored, so we decided to make divinity. Neither of us liked divinity, and I’m pretty sure the only reason we made it was because we didn’t have a lot of ingredients to work with. We got hyper and made a huge mess, but we had a great time and it’s simething we’ll always remember:)

  90. My absolute best baking memory was making cookies with my mom and sister during the holidays. We would quadruple the sugar cookie recipe and mix a mass amount of dough! Then we would make cookie plates to hand out to the neighbors.
    We still make sugar cookies to this day, just not quite the same mass quantity now. ;)

  91. My favorite baking memory was definitely when I used to bake cookies with my mom and older brother. This was a steady family tradition of ours. I remember vividly using the tree and ornament shaped cutters. I loved feeling grown up and seeing the outcome of the cookies. This was an important staple in my life because it kind of jump started my baking interest :) Thank you for this amazing opportunity. I’m sure there are many out there who are still using a handmixer (me) lol <3

  92. My favorite baking memory is when I baked Blue Clue`s cake for my 3 years old son. Turned out pretty good :)

  93. I am puertorican and on christmas my lovely grandma made “arroz con dulce” I really dont know exacly how to say that in english jajaja but here it is “sweet rice”. Oh my God she made the best and I remember steeling it from the fridge because she have a piece for every person and because our family is really big never was enough for repeat jajaja those moment that I keep like my treasure

  94. My favorite baking memory was when I was 10 years old. I made my first cake with my mom and she didn’t bake either so the cake turned out terrible. We had a good laugh and that sparked my love for baking ever since :)

  95. My favorite baking memory is with my cousins during Christmas time one year when we just made a bunch of different Christmas themed baked goods and spent all day together baking them. Brings back warm memories!

  96. Making lemon bars with my sister every summer!

  97. I always loved baking with my family, but the best was when my brother and I tried to make cookies as a surprise for our mom. We wanted to make no bake cookies, (you know the ones that are chocolatey, coconuty and oaty). Well, we were out of coconut. We used about 3 peanuts. We were out of oats. We used flour, We were out of cocoa. We used chcolate syrup. We decided to bake it since the consistency wasn’t quite right. It was a terrible mess, but one that has gone down in our family history!

  98. My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas cookies with my mom and sister. We have made this an annual tradition for many years. We all have our favorite cookies we want made and we often debate which kinds should stay in the rotation and which ones should not from year to year. It is a wonderful time!

  99. My favourite baking memory was baking in my college dorm with my friends. We were making cupcakes, working together and I was delegating tasks, and we started singing–it was like something out of a TV show!

  100. My favorite baking memory isnt really my own, but I just remember being little and watching my dad bake these huge cakes for the holidays and realizing that I wanted to be doing that some day. I’m happy now to be making those same cakes and desserts he made and also new desserts and cakes of my own :)

  101. My favorite baking memories are of my mom and me making everything from simple biscuits to Christmas cookies from recipes in her 1950s-era Good Housekeeping cookbook. That cookbook now sits on my bookshelf and is one of my most cherished childhood treasures. One only needs to thumb through the tattered book to discern which recipes were our favorites–they’re the ones yellowed with drips of butter and eggs and heaven knows what else! :)

  102. My favorite memory of baking is making scottish shortbread with my mom. Simple and yummy and a bit of our heritage. Not many people make it anymore and its the only thing I make strictly at Christmastime because its just too darn good to have around the house all year long. She and I would make many batches to give as neighbor gifts. Still make it with my kids.

  103. Baking Christmas cookies with my kids, this year #4 will be old enough to bake with us. I’m looking forward to it :) I love that they will ask to do our traditional baking each year – so fun!

  104. My favorite baking memory is from my preteen years. I had discovered the awesomeness of stacked cakes and I made a three-tiered cake for a family member’s birthday. No separating cardboards, no dowels, just cake-on-cake goodness! It was enough to feed 40 people and there were only 5 of us there! Baking is the best way to bring smiles to people’s faces!

  105. My favorite baking memory was making cupcakes for my sister-in-law’s bridal shower. It was beach-themed and I had so much fun dying the icing and decorating them with white chocolate shells & mini umbrellas! They turned out great.

  106. my favorite baking memory is baking pies with my grandpa. Every Thanksgiving we’d make pies for the family and drive them down for our celebration. After his death, I stopped baking until I had children of my own and found my love of baking again.

  107. My favorite baking memory on the floor banging on bowls and tupperware while my mom bakes her famous cranberry apple pie.

    It’s one of my earliest memories. It had just been the two of us for a long time, but then she met my dad and got married and we finally were a family. And this meant we finally had our own house and our own cabinets that I was free to rip open and take out every implement and smash it around while my mom made pie, which was of course how I “helped.”

    I’m never going to forget how that brown linoleum sounded when I banged spoons and bowls on it and that Johnny 5 was playing on the tv in the next room, and how happy my parents looked. The taste of that pie with vanilla ice cream always brings me back to that day.

  108. I love to bake… I remember learning how when I was 9 or 10. My mom and I used to make banana bread and pumpkin bread. We had the BEST recipes for both (the banana bread has rum and sour cream!). We still use the banana bread recipe, but sadly, the pumpkin bread recipe was lost 17 years ago when she moved into her condo. We have been looking for something similar ever since, but have never found one quite like it.

  109. My favorite memory of baking in the kitchen is with my paternal grandma. She lived next to me growing up and she made this chocolate cake for my birthday every year and we would watch old black and white movies all day and bake that special chocolate cake together!

  110. My favorite baking memory has to be any time my Grandma or my Mom would let my brother and I lick the bowl (cookie dough was always the best!).

  111. I remember making the peanut butter kiss cookies with my mom and twin sister. We had a little assembly line going – my mom would roll the cookies into balls and my sister and I each manned a bowl of either the green or red sugar to roll the cookies and then plop the kisses on them. Great memories and tasty cookies all while the Christmas tunes were signing on the radio and the tree lights were twinkling in the background.

  112. One of my favorite baking memories was when I was younger and I made a batch of blonde brownies. We had run out of all-purpose flour, so I decided to be “thrifty” and substituted whole wheat flour instead. They were not good. But my brothers and sisters and I braved the taste and managed to eat them all, so we could make more afterwards :)

  113. My favorite baking memory is more of a baking tradition. For as long as I can remember, my Mother has made chocolate fudge and toffee and handed them out to her neighbors during Christmas time. Some of her neighbors look forward to it every year! I’ve been after her for years to teach me how to make them. Sadly though, it’s looking as if that my not happen, my Mom was just recently diagnosed with stage 4 Lung cancer. She was never a smoker, and no other explainations as to why she would have this. Her health is rapidly declining.(sorry for the negativity, just reality for me at the moment).. I hope to carry on her tradition though! :)

  114. Mine would probably have to be when we (my family) would bake around Christmas time. We’d spend the whole day baking peppermint cookies, sugar cookies, ginger snap cookies, naniamo bars, and of course gingerbread men! Every year its always more more fun and goodies!

  115. My favorite baking memories are from my high school years. I remember standing in a busy kitchen with my dad, mom, grandmother & the rest of the family running in and out, everyone baking and cooking. I was always baking along side my grandmother while she was preparing her famous Mac & cheese, my dad pulling the roast out and the rest of the family all preparing and helping where needed. A few years later I lost both sets of grandparents and an uncle all in about a year. Those years prior are some of my most cherished memories.

  116. Every Christmastime when I was little until last Christmas, we would have Cookie Day. We would gather at my Grandma’s house & mix several batches of the family’s favorite cookie recipes & spend the day baking. As kids, my sisters & I got to “decorate” the spritz cookies. When grandma passed, we continued Cookie Day at my Mom’s house & of course, our children were the decorating kids. My Mom passed this past July, so this will be my first Christmas & my first Cookie Day w/o my Mom.

  117. i love baking with my daughter. we bake holiday cookies ever year together for our friends and neighbors

  118. Making cannoli at Christmastime with my mom, aunts and cosins. It’s extra special now that my ten year old daughter joins us.

  119. I have sooo many wonderful memories of baking with my Grandmother, but one particular time that stands out in my mind is when she was teaching me how to make her buttermilk biscuits. She did not measure a single ingredient, but simply ‘eyed’ everything…making it a huge challenge to make them taste {and/or look} anything like hers!!! I swear to you, that sweet lady could have made them with her eyes closed :) She has been gone from this ole world for five years now and try as I may…I just cant make “Mamaw’s biscuits”!!!

  120. My favorite memory is my mother turning over to me the job of making from scratch cut-out biscuits while she made the white sauce for gravy for Saturday night dinner – no one went to school or work on Saturday so it was casual and relaxing and usually involved breakfast food.

  121. My sisters and I love to bake for the holidays but somehow several years ago on Thanksgiving, time snuck up on us and we didn’t have time to make a dessert. So we went to WalMart on a crazy Thanksgiving afternoon and bought the only dessert we could find- a cheesecake platter! Every year since then, it’s been our tradition to brave WalMart for a cheesecake on Thanksgiving day.

  122. I had my 7 year old niece come and stay with us for a week this summer. Her mom doesn’t bake.
    While she was here we baked cakes and pulled out all my decorating tips, colored the frostings and I let her have at it. After we were done she said “Best day ever!” :) Totally worth the mess!

  123. My favorite baking memory is building gingerbread houses with my daughter-in-law and her mom!

  124. My best baking memory is with my Grandma Grace. She lived in a small town in Texas with a nice big garden and one perfect peach tree. She would make the most incredible crust and make, not a pie, but a cobbler. Long strips of butter flakey goodness in a lattice pattern over the sweetest peaches ever. Then to top it off, homemade vanilla ice cream, from a hand crank machine packed in salt. I think of her every time I peel a peach. And call my daughter – named her Grace!

  125. Every year Savvy and I bake and decorate a cake for her Papi. The pride she has in decorating it is just priceless!

  126. I would love to win this!!! My favorite baking memory was actually making your chocolate cake that is covered in chocolate bars. I made this cake for my little brother who adores chocolate on his 18th birthday. He was so totally surprised and adored the flavor to the point that he still brags about the cake to this day. I was so happy to have made something so special for him . :)

  127. My favorite memory is from my childhood. I will never forget begging my mom to let me bake my first every cornbread from scratch. We didn’t have packaged anything back then, so you had to make it with cornmeal. I remember my mom “saying don’t put to much sugar or it will be ruined”. Needless to say, I put 3 heaping cups of sugar…lol I burned the oven, my dad took a picture and my overflowing cornbread went straight into the trash. But, we all had a good time laughing. Mom does know best!

  128. My favorite baking memory is with my grandma! I would walk over to her house with a list of cookies my dad likes and we would spend all day making a mess and lots of peanut butter and chocolate kiss cookies!

  129. I have 3 children, and my middle child (a son) absolutely LOVES to bake with me. We make chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin bread, cinnamon rolls, and many other things. He not only loves to cook, he is also my math whiz and helps me double or triple my recipes! I hope he never outgrows his love of cooking with mom. :)

  130. my mom & grandparents are from Croatia….and watching mom & grandma make the traditional Croatian treats, including the best apple strudel ever and povitica-nut filled coffee cake or sweet bread, is my best memory. last year at Christmas I took my digital recorder along and taped mom’s directions so I can always make it as perfectly as she does

  131. i love that mixer and i also need one!…

  132. When I was growing up I was always the pie maker, and my family eats a lot of pie! I would make around 6 pies for each holiday. When I got married I took over the pie making for my in-laws family…but I was only allowed to make two and one HAD to be pumpkin. So each year I make one pumpkin and one that they have never had before. It was fun to watch my father-in-law try my oatmeal pie recipe. :)

  133. I remember making Sfouf, a Lebanese yellow cake with my granny. I have always regretted not writing her recipe down…

  134. My ten year old daughter and I just spent time together making cupcakes for the fair. She did the baking and decorating and I supported. They were yummy especially the chocolate frosting. She won third place for the cute little pandas you have on your website. Thanks!
    It’s great to spend quality time together before she realizes she doesn’t need a mother :)

  135. Every Christmas my mom’s family gets together for cookie day. Everyone brings their favorite dough and we bake all day. My favorite are the Spritz cookies using the cookie press. The camel cookies always end up looking like Picassos with three nonpareil eyes.

  136. Since I was a teenager, the first weekend of October, my family always bakes pumpkin bread. Even though we live across the country from each other now, I know that during that first weekend, my mom, sister, and I will all be baking pumpkin bread — the perfect way to welcome fall!

  137. Baking sugar cookies with my Mom and sisters during the Holidays so that the grandkids can frost them to share with each other. Messy but so much fun and cuteness!

  138. My favorite baking memory is when I was a really young kid, one year at Christmas my sister and I convinced our mom to bake cookies with us to decorate. So she went out and got all the ingredients for gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies and we spent a whole weekend trying out different recipes and baking and decorating little gingerbread reindeer and sugar cookie angels. We never did it again after that, but I remember walking around to all my family members on Christmas Eve telling them to eat the cookies we’d made. I was so happy and proud.

  139. My dad has always been a fan of my baking ever since I was 7 years old. When I was 9 I was trying to make him a banana cake. I didn’t pay attention but I grabbed soy sauce instead of vanilla extract. I just saw a dark container in the pantry and didn’t really think nothing of it until 5 minutes before the cake was done. OH NO! I USED SOY SAUCE! :( The cake finished baking, I took it out…and was too embarrassed to let my dad taste it. He bit into a slice, and said “this is so good!” To this day I don’t know if he was trying to make me feel better but he ate banana bread the next morning as well. I guess it goes to show that baking isn’t something people just do for fun, it brings back memories of the loved ones who motivated me along the way even when I wasn’t perfect. :)

  140. My grandma made the best sugar cookies with chocolate frosting and placed them in a big red box at christmas time. Wish I had the recipe. so many good family memories.

  141. When I was 12 a friend from church taught a group of us girls how to make cinnamon rolls from scratch with yeast. I remember feeling so grown up ;) my family asked me to make it all the time after that, unfortunately I lost the original recipe… still looking for one that reminds me of the original.

  142. My favorite baking memories are making cookies with my three daughters when they were young. It was always chaotic and messy but they loved it and so did I. Now I have three young granddaughters and hope to some day bake with them.

  143. My favorite holiday is obviously Christmastime. I have very fond memories of baking– my mother was a full time nurse, and worked long hours, so time spent in our kitchen on her days off to bake cookies brings back childhood memories. I remember baking a cake for my grandmother’s birthday, which falls on Christmas Eve. Although it was a simple yellow cake out of the box, she loved it! Although my grandma has passed on, I still try to bake something on Christmas Eve for my family to enjoy. :)

  144. I loved the holidays when my mom would make “cocoon” cookies then my job would be to coat them in powdered sugar. I’m now passing it along to my girls. They love getting their hands dirty just like I used to!

  145. I will always remember baking with my grandmother. I would mix and bake the cookies and she would sit at th table and decorate. Her eyesite wasn’t very keen and it made for some very interesting cookies. We ate them all. I miss her.

  146. The first thing that came to mind was making peanut butter balls at Christmas time as a kid with my brother. My mom’s recipe called for paraffin wax mixed in with the chocolate chips for that shiny effect. Seems gross to me now… but good times!

  147. My mom taught me to bake Toll House cookies when I was a very young girl. The thing is, she taught me “her” way of making them. She loved thick, hard cookies, so instructed me to always use 3 cups of flour in the mix. After 10+ years of making them “Mom’s way”, I realized that I actually enjoyed flat, gooeyTollhouse cookies! After that realization, I had to make two batches each time I baked for the family, “my way” and “Mom’s way” Ha ha!

  148. Every year since I was about 4, my sister, mother and I always bake a variety of cookies. We’ve always made the same sugar cookies, but we also choose different cookie recipes (about 6) every Christmas. We also ways have such a beautiful collection after spending hours in the kitchen making dough, freezing, baking, and decorating. We then wrap them up and deliver them to neighbors!

  149. aaah its 11 o clock and im craving sweets!

  150. Whenever I make Christmas sugar cookies, I picture my tiny little grandmother (we called her grandma Turtles) sitting at the kitchen table in the house her husband built her in Dana Point, CA, rolling out a billion little dough balls. Couldn’t stand at the kitchen counter anymore, but still made batches and batches of cookies!

  151. One of my favorite bashing memories was my daughters first christmas. She was almost a year old and we made cookies for santa. I let her shake in the sprinkles which she loved! I’m so glad I took pictures of her too. Now it is our holiday tradition.

  152. Every year my sister and I make holiday cookies together. We bicker over how to stir the batter right and always use cookie cutters that have nothing to do with Christmas. The cookies that don’t turn out as well always somehow end up on Mom and Dad’s plate and the rest are usually gone in two days.

  153. I guess my favorite baking memory is simply baking sugar cookies with mom for Christmas.

  154. My favorite baking memories are from our yearly, childhood gingerbread tree ornament bake-out :) Our gingerbread cookies were baked with the metal ornament hooks in them, and then personalized with frosting and assorted sprinkles. As we got older, the personalization got wilder and more inventive, it was so much fun! One year the dog knocked the tree down and ate all the cookies, spitting out the hooks! Another year my dad made some VERY busty, topless hula dancers that my mom refused to put on the tree… We secretly hung them ’round the back of the tree and moved them to the front on Christmas Day :) Then I grew up and had a daughter on the 26th of December so her before-Christmas-birthday party was a gingerbread ornament, then gingerbread HOUSE, decorating party for many years :)

  155. My younger sister and I always bake together every year around the holidays. It is an incredible bonding experience and has also led to frustrating arguments but we always look back on the time together and laugh. “remember that time you forgot to put the baking soda in the ginger cookies?” or “remember that time you burnt a whole batch of whoopie pies?” we always find a way to blame it on the other person even if it was an oversight on both of our parts. :) One year we even pulled an all nighter just to get all the recipes done that we were set on making that year. I can’t wait to see what my sister wants to do this year!

  156. Wow-What an opportunity! I have so many baking memories-it’s hard to pick a favorite…Growing up helping my mom make a dozen different kinds of Christmas cookies every year from the Wisconsin Electric Company’s infamous cookie books and the current cut out cookie family affair (I make the dough, hubby rolls and bakes, and kids decorate) definitely top the list.

  157. My Grandma on my Dad’s side used to make Paczki on Fat Tuesday. She’s no longer with us but we do have an old recipe of hers. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to follow since she used a glass of flour (what size glass is beyond me!). My Dad carried on the tradition when I was younger by making them on Fat Tuesday and now I have been making them for the past few years. And if you don’t know what a paczki is, it’s a polish donut and it’s pronounced “punch-key”.

  158. Making “magic bars” and with my Grandma. They were one of my favorite holiday treats that she decided I needed to learn how to make them since I liked them so much!

  159. I will always remember baking pumpkin bread in coffee cans with my Grandma for Christmas. It was the only baking she ever did from scratch and we had to start the baking right after Thanksgiving. She was such a great, giving and loving person! There was never a shortage of people who came to visit the month of Decemeber and she’d always pull out a pumpkin bread from the freezer which she’d wrapped in foil with curling ribbon on both endsfor them to take home. Helping out always meant we’d get the ends to eat as payment! How sweet it was!!

  160. My favorite memory is of Christmas cookie baking with my mom.One Saturday in December we would spend all day baking dozens of cookies and making several pans of fudge,all to be sent to family and friends for Christmas. Our favorite cookie to make was peanut blossoms. Even though my mom passed away in 2005 my kids and I still spend one Saturday baking cookies. Good memories!

  161. One of my favorite baking memories is one of my boyfriend baking. I came home from work one night to him standing in the kitchen looking very proud that he had just made some chocolate chip cookies (my favorite). About 5 minutes later the smell of something burning came wafting out of the kitchen. I ran to the kitchen to see what happened and it turns out he had put the cookie dough on cooling racks instead of cookies sheets. Having only ever seen cookies once they’re done he just assumed that this was how they were baked. We laughed about this one for a long time and has become a favorite story among both our families.

  162. Baking and decorating Christmas cookies with my sister. We never got along as kids UNLESS we were baking those cookies :)

  163. We kids would go over to grandma’s house to bake cut-out sugar cookies at Christmas time. I always loved doing that and can still picture the table, cookie cutters and dough in my mind! It’s been a long time, but one of those treasured memories!

  164. One of my favorites has to be when I was younger. My brother and I would help our mom make sugar cookie dough, cut shapes, and bake. BUT, then came the reallllly fun part. Mom would set out at least 6 different colors of frosting, all sorts of sprinkles and jimmies and all the decorating stuff she had and we would decorate every one. I remember eating enough blue frosting to where my own mouth turned blue!

  165. Every Christmas for as long as I can remember my mom and I bake christmas treats and watch oprah’s favorite things. Mom would tape it. Our favorites are date balls, spiced pecans and fruit cake cookies.

  166. Favorite baking memory–Making Fruitcake cookies with my Nana. Better than any fruitcake you ever tasted. After she died, I realized I didn’t have the recipe. Luckily my Granny had it and mailed it over to me. So my memory is two fold–making the cookies with my Nana, then receiving the recipe (handwritten) from my Granny. :)

  167. My favorite baking memories are when the kids and I go up to my husbands grandmother’s house and bake before the holidays. Grandma Jean is the best!!! So fun, although sometimes there ends uo being more talking than baking going on. ;). Memories to hopefully last a lifetime in my kids.

  168. My favorite baking memories are the ones I’ve piled up, year after year, of making lemon Christmas cut-out cookies with my mom. All the women in our family make them. When I was small, Mom would lay out the trays of cut cookies and my brother and I would decorate reindeer and snowmen, Santa faces and stars; now Mom and I bake and decorate them together every Christmas. I’m so thankful for these sweet times with her!

  169. baking Hello Dollies with my grandma for Christmas!

  170. My favorite memory is of my grandma who was the best cook in our family. One day I asked her for a particular recipe and she said it was only in her head. I said, “Grandma, when you die then your recipes will die with you.” “Oh well,” she said. She didn’t want anyone to have her special recipes!

  171. Baking pie crust cookies when my mom made a pie. We’d roll out the scraps, brush melted butter on them then sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Cut them in strips and could hardly wait for them to bake. I must have burned my tongue every time trying to eat them as soon as they came out of the oven.

  172. Baking bread with my grandma around the holidays :)

  173. My husband and I don’t have children, so my best baking memories are of me with my nieces and nephews decorating cookies with me when they were younger. They were so creative with their decorating. It was so much fun making those memories with them

  174. When I was very young, we visited family in the Midwest every year in the middle of the summer. My mother didn’t get along with her mother-in-law, the house was tiny, it was always a stressful, cranky experience. But once each trip, my aunt would spirit me away to stay overnight in her tiny, trailer-sized house and we’d talk and she’d teach me how to bake cornbread or make pancakes or carrot cake. It was the first indication I’d ever gotten that a grown-up woman could live by herself and take care of herself and didn’t need a husband to provide for her, and she was a very funny, lively, independent woman. I was fascinated by the baking, but just by her in general as well.

  175. Our family always makes these really great powdered sugar roll out cookies for all holidays. They are wonderful, and we have all made them by the 1000’s! I remember my mom always baked them and brought them to school for me to share with my classmates.

  176. Oh so many, many years ago with my grandmother when she was teaching me to make homemade biscuits. She was such a great cook. You don’t cut out biscuits you roll them out. I still make them the same today.

  177. I loved baking & decorating cookies at Christmas with my mom & grandmother. Now I’m continuing the tradition with my boys. :)

  178. Every Christmas, my nana, mom, sister and I would bake a bunch of treats and give them out as gifts. My favorite was my moms homemade chocolate turtles with homemade caramel sauce and my nanas “roll-ups” which was a pie crust like dough with the jam of your choice, crushed pecans and sliced into wedges, rolled up liked croissants, baked and dipped in powdered sugar when cooled.
    I’d eat them all day long on Christmas…no wonder I always had a tummy ache lol.

  179. I loved baking christmas cookies with my mom. I remember how good she was a rolling out the sugar cookies. Mine never seem to turn out that good.

  180. My daughters and I make them regularly. Turn the music up loud, dance party begins, baking starts! It is always fun and delicious!

  181. My grandmother used to get all the grandkids together and decorate sugar cookies for all of the major holidays. Fun cookie cutters, bright colored frosting and sprinkles galore! I still love to bake to this day!

  182. Baking Christmas cookies, lemon bars and chocolate oat bars, placing them on Santa trays and delivering them to friends.

  183. My favorite baking memory is helping my mom mix, prep, and bake many hundreds of cookies every Christmas to give as gifts to just about everybody we knew! :) Attached to that memory is also sneaking down to snatch a few after everybody else was in bed – once I crossed paths with my dad doing the same thing! lol

  184. My best memories always revolve around baking for the holidays with my mother and grandmother. Now those traditions are being passed on to the next generation.

  185. One of my favorite baking memories was baking a very special birthday cake for my best friend!

  186. could do so much with that would love to win it and those pies look so yummy

  187. My sister put together a baby shower for me when I was pregnant. I’ll always remember that she asked me to do the cake since I decorated cakes. So I did my own baby shower cake!

  188. The first apple kuchen of the fall! Always a big deal in our house:)

  189. I remember Friday nights growing up…Mom would start a large batch of yeasted sweet dough right after dinner. As the evening progressed she would make several pans of cinnamon rolls, a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread and two loaves of chocolate chip bread. (My little brother did not like raisins, so Mom replaced them with chocolate chips.) One pan of those cinnamon rolls got consumed before we went to bed. Great memories!

  190. My favorite baking memory is baking Jamaican Black Cake with my mom at Christmastime. Licking the bowl was always a treat. lol.

  191. My favorite memory baking is one day a year my mom would take a day off from work to bake holiday treats and make rosettes (a Norwegian Christmas cookie). It was always kind of magical to run home and see our kitchen overflowing with goodies. As I got older, she’d let me stay home and help her!

  192. I love to make candy with my family. Wrapping the caramels are fun. Also making the Santa cookies on Christmas eve it great.

  193. Baking cupcakes with my two guy friends the day before Valentine’s Day. Seeing them put so much effort in making their cupcakes special for their lovers is my favorite memory of baking.

  194. One of my favorite baking memories is my mom using up the leftover pie dough by rolling it out (like making a pie crust), topping it with butter, cinnamon & sugar, rolling it up like a log and then slicing it and baking it. Yum! My grown daughter asks me to make it now and then (using all the pie dough… not just the leftovers).

  195. My favorite baking memory is when i first made cupcakes. They were vanilla (:

  196. I know I have to be 18,but I at least want to try.I am 11,and I am starting a bakery with my buddies.My memory is when I baked cupcakes with my great grandma in the spring,2006.I still bake with her today!

  197. Me and my siblings grew up with my single mom and she was so busy working all the time to provide for us. But now that I am a mom, I want to be able to make a tradition with my son. I love baking and he devours everything I make. I hope to make more baking memories with him.

  198. My favorite memory is making sugar cookies with my grandma every Christmas. We would make a bunch of different colored icings and get all the little sprinkles to decorate them with. One time we even attempted to make a sugar cookie house :)

  199. My grandmother used to work at a bakery and had an amazing arsenal of baking supplies. She introduced me to the KitchenAid stand mixer! Every year at Christmas the cousins would gather around the big kitchen table and decorate Christmas cookies, to eat after our Christmas dinner & annual Trivial Pursuit marathon. I loved how we all prepped for Christmas as a family & then got to enjoy it together!

  200. Baking Christmas cookies with my Grandma. Miss her…

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