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 best baking memory is flipping through my mom’s old falling apart cookbook full of newspaper clippings, and picking out a recipe to bake with my sister. We haven’t baked together in years, but we relive the memory by now baking with our own kids.
When my husband and I first got married we lived in Hawaii and pizza’s there were so expensive and we were collage students so we started making pizza’s together every Friday night. It was a lot of fun because we would try to make different kinds and invite friends over for dinner too. We still make pizza’s together but not as much now but when we do it brings back those fun memories!
Doing a cookie exchange with my family right after Thanksgiving is my favorite memory.
My favorite is making sugar cookies with my oldest daughter, and then spending the time while decorating them.
My favorite memory when my mom used to bake orange cake and make tea then we used to sit down and eat it together. I will never forget this ………………………
I have a group of 8 close friends that I knew from high school and college, and for each person’s birthday, we have baking parties to make delicious cakes that are uniquely decorated to reflect something special to that person each year. These get-togethers really strengthened our bond and made for many, many unforgettable memories!
My most recent and favorite memory is when my best friend and myself decorated cakes and it looked like powdered sugar exploded in the kitchen.
making homemade custard pies with my mom.
My favorite baking memory is making cookies for the harvest crew every summer with my grandma. Those were good times.
My mom wasn’t a huge baker, but when we did bake, she’d always let us eat lots of cookie dough and like the bowl and beaters. :)
Baking Christmas cookies and decorating them with my mom. She was so good at decorating!
My favorite baking memory is helping my Mom make Christmas cookies each year. Especially Belgian Waffle Cookies and my great-grandma’s sugar cookies. Yum!
My grandma mom always baked chocolate chip cookies for every holiday, get together (or just because). It became a tradition that my mom kept. All my childhood and even my college friends rave about Debbie’s special cookies. Now my mom’s a grandma and she bakes them special for my two kids (and we bake them at home between visits to Grandma’s house).
When I first started baking, I didn’t pour the flour in increments so I got a lovely outfit of flour due to the fact that it flew out of the bowl and onto me and the countertop and everywhere except for in the bowl.
I love the holiday season, I love to bake and I have soooo much fun baking the cakes, cookies, pies mmmmmm…..I can smell it and taste it right now lol!
I have always loved baking with my mom. When I lived at home she and I would put on a couple tea parties a year for some friends. We would be baking tiny tarts and pies and making little sandwiches practically nonstop for a couple days leading up to the party. We still love to bake together when we get the chance–especially when it comes to Thanksgiving pies (we usually have at least as many pies as people to eat them)!
I loved baking sugar cookies every christmas with my mom and sisters!! Such a wonderful memory!
When I was younger I used to sleep over my Grandma’s house. One of the reasons I looked forward to going was because we would bake cookies together. Our favorite cookies to make were butter cookies and gingerbread men. My grandmother is a perfectionist when it comes to everything so the cookies she decorated were always beautiful, while the gingerbread men I decorated were almost unrecognizable. I used to think she would be upset with me about it but she used to just laugh and tell me the ones I did were the best ones. I remember feeling proud of myself and i still think of it to this day.
my grandmother…baking thousands more cookies than her 2 grandchildren could ever eat but they covered every table in her house regardless.
Christmas baking marathoms with my mom & sis :)
My Mom bakes sand tarts with my kids every year.
Usually when I bake, either it goes not quite as planned or few people enjoyed it. One day I made oatmeal raisin cookies and they went quickly. It was nice to see my family enjoy what I baked.
My favorite holiday baking memory is the yearly cookie exchange I go in. There’s nothing like having a nice mix of sweets at Christmas time without all the extra work!
I remember when I was little my Mom would always let me bake and cook in the kitchen, as long I would clean up after I was done. One of the things that we would bake together would be a fancy tea ring, we would make about 12 of them, and we would give them away to people that were going to be alone at Christmas time. Also my Mom started a tradition when I was little, after the first snow fall that stayed on the ground, we would make and decorate gingerbread man, and I have carried both of those traditions on with my two children, who are now 26 and 23.
My mom wasn’t much for baking, but in my mid-teens I became obsessed! I was baking for everyone’s birthday, friends and family alike, and eventually for no reason at all. I’ve managed to infuse a great appreciation for baked goods within my daughter, and every year, she pulls double duty to help me with my holiday baking. Now that she’s a teen herself, every moment I can steal her away from her iPhone is precious!
So far the only person I’ve baked with is my sister. Hopefully I will be able to make memories in the future with my children. =)
My favorite memories always included holiday baking! Chocolate chip cookies, almond bark pretzels, homemade caramels, pheffernauts (family tradition), lemon bars and more! But my most favorite part was the traditional Christmas roll we got to eat the day the family got together. Sweet homemade roll with almond filling and red/green candied cherries on top. YUM!
My mom taught me how to bake bread when I was a teenager–I remember taking copious notes. Then I didn’t bake for a very long time, but now my son has been diagnosed with a soy allergy, and I’m baking my own bread all the time. I think of my mom every time.
My best baking memories come from the times my grandmother taught me how to perfect a homemade (from scratch) pie crust…her crusts were so thin and perfect and very hard to recreate…but she loved teaching me and I still make them to remember her!
My favorite baking memories are growing up with my mom. She knows her chocolate chip cookie recipe by heart and she can make it in under 5 minutes. No matter how many compliments I get on the same recipe that I make, my mom’s are always way better!
when I was little my mom’s friend (AKA second mom) was watching all the kiddos and we made divinity. Well, my sister and i managed to get the plastic spatula mangled in the blender blade during the process. It was hilarious and something I will never forget. The poor spatula was torn up! Thanks for another giveaway opportunity :)
My favorite baking memory is my aunt teaching me how to make the perfect pie crust.
making a green tea cake with whipped cream frosting for my brother’s high school graduation! it was my baking ‘debut.’
I would say cooking out of the gold medal flour abc cookbook as child with my Mom, but NOW i’d have to say cooking out of it with my two year old angel!
My favorite baking memory will always be when my mom and I made christmas cookies. She would pull out her Better homes and Garden cookbook that she has had since, I think, before I was born and we would make dozens and dozens of christmas shapes. She would let me use as much frosting and sprinkles as I wanted. These will always be some of my favorite memories and I can’t wait to make memories like that with my children
My favorite memory is when my now 15 year old whet to see Santa when he was 3, Santa told him his favorite cookie was chocolate chip cookies with colored sprinkles. So every year and 4 kids later we still make the same cookies every year for Santa the night before Christmas. :)
My favorite baking memory is with my grandma and sister. Every year we would the whole week of Thanksgiving at her house baking for the holiday. She had a huge kitchen with a long island in the middle. My sister and I would always sit on the counter on the island and help my grandma bake (and pick at scraps of cookie dough or whatever else we had made!). It was my favorite holiday tradition!
When I was little I made chocolate zuchinni bread but accidentally used cucumber. The bread didn’t work out so well but my family had a good laugh.
One of my friend’s sons has severe food allergies. For his 2nd birthday, he wanted a SpongeBob cake, egg and nut free. Having utmost confidence in my baking ability, I reassured my friend that we could make his dreams come true, and that there was NO need to order a backup cake. We had this under control.
My friend and I set out to make the cake – at 11pm the night before the party (and with drinks in hand…who doesn’t bake better with a glass of wine??) Attempt number one was a disaster, and stuck to the pan. Attempt number two didn’t rise at all. By the time we got to attempt number three, it was well past 3am on the day of the party. We were both deliriously tired, a little tipsy, and a lot frustrated. SUCCESS!!! I finished decorating the cake about a 1/2 hour before the party started, and it was a huge hit. Lesson learned – don’t wait the night before to take on an adventure like that!
My dad was such a wonderful man; loving, caring, funny, and generous. He kept the family together when my mom died at a young age. His love of cooking came from his mother. Every year, he would make fudge. Not the kind with marshmallows or corn syrup, but the “real” kind with cocoa, sugar, vanilla, milk, and butter. It was heavenly. The smell, the texture, the taste! Sadly, none of us have been able to replicate his fudge just the memories surrounding it.
When I was a little kid, I wondered to my family why the baby Jesus didn’t get a birthday cake like the rest of us. My mom ran with that idea, and to this day, our family always enjoys a birthday cake at the end of Christmas dinner…
I loved baking cookies for Santa with my mom. I now do it with my kids every year. We play Christmas movies back to back and bake cookies all day.
Our mom would always bake cookies at Christmas time. Us kids would get excited because we knew we would get to help cut out and decorate the sugar cookies. It was great to be with my sister and brother doing this(and getting along). Its a tradition we now have passed onto my Nieces and hopefully they will continue as they grow up.
My mom likes to share stories of when she first came to this country, she would buy loaves of bread because it was something she could never have or afford in her former country. I like to bake fresh bread for her on her birthday and holidays as it is something she still really enjoys. Everytime I make bread, I think of her and the joy she has in eating a simple loaf of bread.
Decorating Christmas cookies for family and friends in middle school. I had a lot more free time back then…
Once during college I came home to be snowed in on purpose. My mom and baked the entire day, it was just lovely.
My favorite baking memories always come around Christmastime. I love taking over the kitchen and baking as much as possible :)
Although when I was 10 I made biscottis with my grandmother and that was a great memory, too.
My favorite baking memory is the very first time that I made cake pops with my children. I am a perfectionist when it comes to baking and decorating. I remember setting up my little ones (Sky – 7yo & Trevor – 11yo) with all sorts of beautiful sprinkles, colored sugars, edible toppings like candy bar crunchies….just basically anything you can think of! I should have known better but silly me! I turned around to ‘perfect’ my first ever cake pop and when I turned back around to check on my little cake pop monsters, I think my jaw hit the floor. What they didn’t ‘accidentially’ eat, they saturated the poor cake pops in to the point that each one probably weighed about 2 pounds. The best part though, was the pride that was on their little faces over their masterpieces! So even though I am a crazy perfectionist, we packaged up those 2lb cake pops (upside down in a mini cupcake holder at this point) with beautiful ribbon and notes to their teachers to say that these cake pops were made with love! I still have the pictures of those cake pops and the island counter top which took me probably 2 weeks to get clean. It was the prettiest disaster that I have ever seen and I have learned to enjoy those messes each and every time that my babies & I make cake pops. I’m fairly certain that at one point or another – they wont want to bake with me anymore but hopefully they will remember these sweet memories when they make cake pops with their own children MANY MANY years down the road lol!
Baking with my dear Grandmother. Those are treasured memories I will never forget. Some smells take me right back to those times.
My favorite baking memory was the first time I baked with my grandma. It was a moment that changed the rest of my life and turned me into the baker I am. I remember the day perfectly it was the day before Thanksgiving and we make the most delicious White Choco Pumpkin Cheesecake .
Chess Pie! It’s my daddy’s favorite and is simple and easy to make. I learned to bake making that pie. I can’t tell you how many hundred of them I’ve baked for him over the years.
Last year, I decided to make our gingerbread houses from scratch. It ended up being a picture perfect time when it started snowing as I was baking. I live about an hour north of Los Angeles & it does snow at my house since I live next to a forest but it was the only heavy snow that came our way last year. It was such a wonderful time and now memory with the smell of gingerbread and the fire going to warm the house and the snow outside. Mmmm I hope it happens again this year!
In middle school, the day before Valentines Day, my friend and I baked about 100 heart shaped cupcakes for our classmates. We baked them in disposable tins, and I remember going to check on them and being so freaked out that the cupcakes were just about to overflow. I was so much fun passing out the little surprise to our friends the next day.
Baking with my god sons for sure! They are 2 & 4 and it is always a memorable adventure.
Every Christmas season, I used to help my Polish grandmother make pierogies and kolaczki (Polish cookies). I keep her tradition alive and make these items every Christmas Eve and know that she is with me always.
Where do I start? My mom and I used to bake almost every Saturday morning before everyone else woke up, usually muffins. I became the “dessert queen” of family dinners as soon as my mom would let me use the oven. Finally, I have great memories of friends coming over to bake tons and tons of christmas cookies. Or really, mounds of frosting with a bit cookie underneath :)
I started baking with my nephew when he could stand on the stool and see in the bowl (about 18 month old). I still remember some of our baking “adventures” including the importance of starting the mixer on low (imagine chocolate batter dripping from everything including the floor) and explaining to his father how to make chocolate butter cream frosting when he was 5- duh, dad. everyone knows how to make chocolate frosting! sheesh.
I’m hoping to make some new memories in our new home soon.
My favorite baking memory is baking christmas cookies with my mom and grandmother – we set aside a weekend and make every kind of cookie under the sun and to this day I still get a special sugar cookie set aside with my initials on it to eat on christmas day
My favorite baking memory would be when my Grandma Ollie taught me the fine art of making cinnamon toast – of course that was back when bread was homemade, and toast was made under a broiler, not in a toaster. And of course there was real butter on the toast.
I always remember fall as being the time for schwechgen and gombotz, two Austrian decadent desserts that my dad used to make every year. I still remember the sweetness of the italian plums and cinnamon that filled the whole house and especially our bedrooms. It was so easy to fall asleep those nights with that enticing and lulling smell…..
I love making sugar cookies at Christmas time. I always remember making them with my sister. One great memory I have with my kids is we made donuts one year for Easter. It was just so much fun and we may have to do it again this year.
Mine is baking my first key lime pie with my daughter, just less than a year ago. It was amazingly delicious.
My favorite baking memories involve my mom visiting every Christmas and making baklava. It was the best I’ve ever had. She would chop five pounds of walnuts (by hand!!) and make her simple syrup ahead of time. She didn’t use a recipe and I haven’t tried to make it since I lost her six years ago. But boy, what great memories!!
I have three grown young men as sons and my most precious baking memories are on the Christmas holidays when they were small (and I must say that I miss those days with a passion). I would bake and decorate Christmas cookies with them and they would help me decorate them. I would tell them that the cookies were for Santa Clause and after decorating the cookies they would help me put them on a nice plate with a glass of milk. Those days go by so fast and now they love to eat them but no longer help me decorate them. I wonder why??????
Well, that’s my story! Thank you.
When my oldest daughter was 6-8 (she’s now 17), she loved for us to bake a cake on everyone’s birthday, father’s day, etc. I let her go to town on decorating the cakes (she did a great job) and then she would present them.
Baking with my grandmother instantly popped into my head. Whenever she made pies, she would use the leftover pie dough to make cinnamon sugar pies for the grandkids. Now when I make pies, I do the same for my daughter.
My mom, sister, and I would always bake German Tea Cakes and my dad would even join in on the decorating. Now that I have my own family, my parents come to visit and we still make German Tea Cakes with my husband, 2 boys, and whatever extended family happens to be visiting at the time. It is wonderful! :)
My favorite baking memory is when I first made Gingerbread men, they needed more ginger than the recipe called for but it was fun.
Love Christmas baking! Gingersnaps, buckeyes, chocolate crinkles, pecan tassies, and a slew of others. We bake and share with friends and neighbors. So many women today don’t bake at home, they just buy store made cookies that they really appreciate home cooked goodness and yumminess!
My favorite baking memory is from when I was 5 or 6 years old. Every time I went over my Grandma’s house we would bake something. Whether it was cookies or brownies or a cake, my grandma would teach my how to measure and mix the ingredients. I gained all my baking skills from those days with my grandma =]
I fondly remember making Buckeyes with my Mom every Christmas! We made lots of cookies together but the Buckeye candy was always my favorite. :-)
I loved baking pie with my mom. She would always take the scraps and make what she called “pie doughs”, pie dough spread with butter and sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. They were delicious morsels of goodness, kinda like the best pop tarts ever:) Years later when she was helping my daughter Bec make her first pie, they finished by making pie doughs together. It was such a sweet moment:)
My favorite baking memory is making cookies with my mom. She only baked them twice a year. During Christmas time to pass out to family. And during the summer to take on camping trips. The only kind I ever remember her making is chocolate chip cookies.
This is not necessarily my favourite baking memory, but it is my most memorable! I was baking scones and sprinkled out some flour to roll the dough out on and dry it out a bit as it was a bit wet.. While I was kneading, the mix just seemed to get stickier and stickier. It took me a while to realize that someone had placed my unlabeled container of icing sugar where my plain flour container should have been! They were some sweet scones!
Making Gingerbread cookies with my kids. Not just for Christmas anymore, we make skeleton Gingerbread men for Halloween!
I remember my first year being married, and learning to bake special family recipes with my new family members. It was a great time- not only did I learn to make some new things, but I also became closer with the family!
My favorite baking memory is making “melting moments” with my mom during Christmastime when I was younger. They were her special cookies, and it was always a treat getting the chance to bake them with her.
It’s difficult to choose a favorite baking memory as there are so many. Growing up we used to bake oatmeal cookies about once a week. The batter was mixed by hand so that the butter or margarine was properly incorporated. The lucky mixer got to ‘clean’ his/her hands after mixing the batter. I liked to clean my hands before the oatmeal was added in and again after the oatmeal was mixed in. The cookie dough was then refrigerated overnight. For some reason there was a lot less cookie dough in the morning. I wonder how that happened.
The first thing I ever baked for my husband was a key lime pie (this was before we were married). Three years later, he still asks for that pie all the time. :)
My favorite baking memory is with my mom. We decided to make a homemade triple layer spice cake for christmas. It took us all day and we had the best time together! It was a big hit!
I loved making Kringlas with my gram every year and I am the only one that knows how to make them like her.
My first baking memory was with my mom. She has always wanted to make her own bread but she couldn’t read the recipes (she couldn’t read English), so I would always translate the them for her. Her favorites were banana bread and zucchini bread. I started baking a lot after she passed away and I’ve been branching into baking yeasty breads during the summer before graduate school :) So fun and such a great stress reliever!
Baking Christmas cookies and candy with my Mom. She made the best Divinity. She is who truely inspired me to be the Cook & Baker I am today! Thanks Mom
I loved baking cookies with my Grammy in her tiny kitchen!
My favorite baking memory would have to be my birthday party. We didnt bake up sweets though, we actually baked our own homemade pizzas as one of the activities during my party! It was loads of fun and everyone had a good time stretching dough, throwing on toppings, waiting for them to bake up deliciously, and eating them, of course!
My favorite baking moment is my impatience throughout every single time I bake a dish.
Each time I bake a cupcake set or a loaf of bread., I’d look after the oven every 5 minutes. The feeling of being pressured and overexcited makes me love baking more.
Some of my fondest memories are baking with my mom and my grandmother. They taught me so much and I wish they were still alive so I cook with them again. They taught me my love of baking and giving to friends and family.
Whenever I have a church event to go to, I try to bake something to take along. My boyfriend sometimes helps me by doing all the heavy stirring. The mess we make is usually worth it. I can’t wait for the Holidays since they always give me an excuse to bake :)
My favorite pumpkin pie memory is from 1974 when my parents came for a Thanksgiving visit when I lived in Big Bear Lake. Mind you, both parents were from the east and years earlier had moved to California to escape snowy winters. Thanksgiving morning it began to snow, lightly at first but it became heavier with each passing hour. We watched the snow grow deeper as we prepared dinner. My mom (mmm…she made the best pies) made the crust and put the pies in the oven. After the pies had been in the oven a few minutes she said, “Oh, I think I forgot to put in the sugar!” She hustled the pies from the oven, added the sugar, mixed it in with a wooden spoon and put them back in to finish baking. As the aroma of cinnamon and spice filled the house we laughed and giggled. Oh, the pies, they were wonderful!
My favorite baking memory was making Christmas cookies with my paternal grandmother. She was famous for her Spritz cookies, and she taught my sister and me how to make the dough and sprinkle the right amount of sprinkles on the cookies… since she’s passed, I make the Spritz cookies, and they always remind me of her.
favourite baking time.. so many to chose from but i would have to pick making my friend’s 10 year old my sous chef!
My sweet baking memory is making gingerbread cookies and thimble cookies with my mom at Christmas time growing up. I loved pushing the red cinnamon hearts as buttons for the gingerbread bears and my mom would make its smiling face using a toothpick. And she still does to this day!
When my daughter was young, we would bake and decorate sugar cookies during christmas. Many years later I now enjoy baking cookies with my son, he enjoys helping anytime i’ll let him.
I used to love baking absolutely anything with my mom. Sadly, she passed away quite sometime ago, but I think about her every single time im in the kitchen- which is a lot because I became a pastry chef because of her!!!
My favorite baking memory was the one time I was making Christmas cookies with my mom. I accidentally got some flour on her and it turned into an all out flour war between the 2 of us. :) We had to clean it up for days, but it was so fun!!
My favorite baking memory is with my Mom (of course). She would tell me stories about how she learned to make buttermilk biscuits from scratch. As she made her biscuits, rolling them in her hand, patting them with her “love”, she told me she learned to make these biscuits from her mother-in-law, my grandmother. When my mom and dad got married, my mom didn’t know how to make biscuits. My dad brought my mom to his mother and said,”Momma, show my new wife how to make biscuits for me!” My mom loved my dad so much she learned and made them many times a week for her new husband and then her children and grandchildren. (My mom and dad have been married for 59 years this year) I’m still not sure if I would have responded in the same way! haha
My favorite memory is cooking Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with my mom and grandmother. The smell of sage dressing and chit chatting with them while everything cooks warms my heart, and the thought of my mom fussing at me when I sneak bites of turkey and ham makes me giggle like a little kid!
Baking apple pies with my mom and sisters…
My favorite baking memory is when I got help my grandmother during Thanksgiving. She is the one who helped me make my first pumpkin pie and now when I make them I always think of her. :)
However I am looking forward to this Christmas because I will finally get to see all my family from Guatemala, which I haven’t seen in like 6 years!!! I am looking forward to those baking memories that haven’t happened yet!
My favorite baking memory is baking cherry apple pies with my granny. We didn’t have enough of either for one pie so we just poured both in and it turned out great!
My sister taught me to bake, starting when I was in 2nd grade. She is 13 years older than me, and had already finished college and gotten married, living in a nearby apartment. Our family was large, mostly boys, quite poor, and sweets were a real luxury. But once a week my sister would pick me up for a “girls evening” at her newlywed apartment, and patiently teach me the joys of baking. I will never forget those hours of true sisterhood, and the lessons about making something sweet and lovely, no matter how tight your budget. I still use those lessons today. And at various times over the years, usually during the holidays, we still visit each other and bake together. My darling sister is fighting breast cancer right now, and I pray every day for her recovery and look forward to baking beside her again.
My favorite memories are of making counselor breakfasts at summer camp with my mom. We’d get up early and make something special for the adults while the kids slept in.
My favorite baking memory is all of the wonderful ones I have with my children. My daughter at a very young age wanted to learn and this made me so happy. We have many wonderful memories together.
It’s hard to pick a favorite. I’d have to go with my earliest baking memory–when my mother would bring me along to work at the bakery she worked at. To keep me occupied, she’d let me form bread dough into shapes, then let me bake them in the revolving oven…teddy bear shaped bread tastes best! Thanks Mom…!
My favorite baking memories come from Chrsitmas time when my grandmother, mother, my sisters, and I would bake all day long & make tons of yummy sweets.
My favorite baking memory is baking chocolate chip cookies with my husband on my new mixer….which we ended up overloading and burning up the motor on :-( But the cookies were amazing, and we had a good story!
My dad turns into the baking King at Christmas time. When I was a little girl, we would always make sugar cookies and he would help us decorate them with all kinds of sprinkles and icings. Now I am 28 years old, and I still look forward to baking cookies with my dad. :)
When I was in girl scouts as a girl, my troop would do a cookie exchange each holiday season. My mom and I would spend a whole afternoon making sugar cookies. She would roll them out and I would cut and decorate. To this day, I’m still terrible at rolling out cookies since mom always did it!
My favorite baking memory is baking gingerbread for houses….I used to love to decorate them and add inside decor like fireplaces and tables. My Dad, when I was a teen, videotaped me decorating one of these houses and he couldn’t stop laughing while I was doing my Julia Child impersonation!
I always loved baking and decorating Christmas cookies with my older sister. She’s 16 years older, which meant she was an awesome 20-something while I was in elementary school. Most years, I went over to her house to listen to ’90s Christmas CDs (you know those mixes with all the big stars, like Harry Connick Jr.) — or sometimes the soundtrack to “The Little Mermaid” :) — while we frosted little snowmen and Santas.
Favorite baking memory is my mother making Swedish Logs for Xmas and Easter and then hiding them in tupperware containers around the kitchen so they didn’t get eaten before the holiday….
The 1st time I baked with my Nana. We made chocolate donuts from the Betty Crocker cookbook.
My favorite baking memory is when I made a surprise Groom’s cake for my husband to be for our wedding. It was a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup with a bride and groom sitting on top.
I have always loved to bake, but nothing beats my grandmother’s biscuits. One Christmas a few years ago she sought out to teach me how to make these biscuits so that the recipe could be carried on (because just following the recipe doesn’t work.). We had great fun baking together and I learned that everything has an implead “heaping” in front of the measurement on the recipe :)
My favorite baking memories are of baking and decorating our birthday cakes!
Geeting together with my Nanny, her children and grandchildren and baking cookies around the holidays. We would bake enough that each family got to take home a large popcorn tin full of various types of cookies. It was a TON of cookies, hard work and great fun. My favorite was always peanut butter so I got a little extra of those.
Cakes of my grandmother…unforgettable not only for its delicious taste <3
My favorite memory baking is with my 4 year old daughter. She loves to come in the kitchen and add ingredients or mix. It has been a true blessing teaching her to bake. I am a teacher by trait, but when it is your child it touches that special part of your heart.
My favorite baking memory/tradition is definitely making a ridiculous amount of Christmas cookies and giving them out to family with their gifts. Everyone is always so happy.
I have a great candy making memory with my mom. It started when I was a teenager and she taught me how to make Martha Washington candy usually around Christmas time. Confectioners sugar, condensed milk, vanilla, chopped pecans, rolled into a ball then dipped in chocolate. Very tasty. We would get messy and just have a great time.
My favorite time is baking with my now-grown children. It’s always fun to have them in the kitchen with me.
I recently discovered your website through something someone had pinned on Pinterest and I fell in love! While I haven’t tried anything yet, this weekend I’m going to attempt the 14-layer cake. It looks amazing and delicious and I can’t wait to try it!
My favorite baking memory has to be growing up with three sisters and making cookies with my mom’s cookie press. It was one of the old ones that stood on the cookie sheet and hand twisted the knob on the top until your cookie was pressed out. We used the spritz cookie recipe that came with it and churned out so many cookies in so many different shapes. We loved changing the little discs in the bottom to get the Christmas trees or the stars or the dogs or the camels or whatever. Then we’d sprinkle them with colored sugar. Those were the very best cookies ever! I still have mom’s old cookie press (dented and well loved!) and still use it at least once a year along with the original spritz recipe.
My best friend had a daughter when she was 20. I have always treated her daughter as my own. One day we decided to bake sugar cookies with her and have her decorate them. I’m pretty sure she ate more frosting than what made it on the cookies! It was one of my favorite baking memories because I was able to do it with two people I love and sharing something that I love to do with them!
My mom and I used to bake all the time. I especially loved making my grandmother’s brownie recipe. While I helped throughout the entire process, my favorite part (and where I was uniquely qualified) was licking the spoon and bowl once everything was said and done. Such sweet memories!
Making buttery/almondy ‘spritz’ cookies at Christmastime with my mom & sister. We’d dye the dough green for little xmas trees, and dark pink for poinsettia type wreaths…we’d put a chocolate chip in the center.
I don’t have many baking memories as my mom was a good cook…but never baked. My memory consists of her handing me a brownie box mix and asking me to make it…I eventually moved on to creating brownies from the recipe on the cocoa powder tub and now I love to bake…but I’m not so much of a cook!
I love baking with my sons. Whatever we bake it tastes better because we made it together. Its great to make these memories with them.
My favorite baking memory is my mom always letting me put sprinkles on every cookie, whether they were supposed to have sprinkles or not :)
I have many, but my favorite is baking and decorating Christmas cookies every year. I started doing the sugar cut out cookies 20 years ago in my small apartment kitchen. And now it is the highlight of the season in my house for my three sons. We make a mess of the kitchen and are cleaning up colored sugar for weeks, but it is a blast and so memorable.
My favorite baking memory is anytime I am in the kitchen with my aunt. We try to bake weekly and always try new things. We even tried to make your wedding cake pops for a bridal shower, we failed, but it was still fun.
My favorite baking memory is from when I was about 10 and my brother was 12. We always fought over who would get to bake with mom and neither of us wanted to share the job. Plus we just plain always fought. It’s the age we were at :). One day my brother was wanting to bake by himself and decided to make snickerdoodles. he was so proud of the finished product and before he could taste one he sent some with me and Dad as we headed out the door. We got down the road and Dad took a big bite out of one and about gagged. He spit it out and called my Mom, Turns out she had just discovered that my brother had used allspice instead of cinnamon. I don’t know what allspice tastes like, but I’ve known from that day that it DOES NOT taste like cinnamon. Being the little sister who always fought with her older bossy brother, it gave me great pleasure to witness his baking mistake :)
Every year, my mom would pick a Saturday in December and she would, along with my sisters and me, have a marathon baking day getting things ready for Christmas. We would spend all day making our favorite cookies, breads, and also trying out new recipes. It was a fun and messy day and we had lots of goodies to share with friends and family over the holidays!
Ever since my family and i moved to Texas (going on 13 years) my mother and i started to send care packages during the holidays to family and friends. 2 years ago i moved to New York with my Fiancee and during the holidays i would be so sad because i couldn’t be there to help her with the holiday baking. knowing this, my mother made me a care package those two years. It was the best gift i could have ever received. I just recently moved back to texas and now we are planing this year to be one of our biggest holiday bake-a-thons because now that i know how is feels to receive one of the care packages its the most loving and wonderful feeling in the world. The team is back together and we can’t wait to start baking. =)
Baking anything with my mom as a kid…pound cake, gooey butter cake, brownies…she hated me making a mess in her kitchen, so any time I got to bake with her was a treat…or I’d do it when she left me home alone! :)
One of my favorite baking memories is my grandmother, mom, sister, my young daughter and I all making homemade cannolis together at Christmas time. Had a blast!
My son and I don’t have too many hobbies that overlap, but every year at Easter we bake a strawberry cream cake together and it is always the highlight of the meal. He does most of the work himself (he just turned 8), and I cherish the time we spend together working on it.
I love to bake Christmas cookies with my two boys and now with their children. Sprinkles everywhere and psychedelic cookies. Fun!
my favorite baking memory was ANY time my mom baked a cake. she did a LOT of birthday and celebration cakes when i was growing up, mostly in the wilton character pans — and almost exclusively with the “star tip” fill-in method. :) but, anytime she was making a cake she would always use the left over icing and mix it all together, then spread in between two graham crackers and make the yummiest icing cookies. they were my favorite — and this is a tradition i now carry on when i bake/decorate cakes!
My favorite baking memories are making chocolate chip cookies with my mom and adding oatmeal to it. The cookbook we used for this recipe had vanilla stains all over the page from being used so much!
My Grandmother made a unique cake when I was little, and through the years, since she has passed, my mother and I make it now. We call it “Grandma’s Pudding Sauce Cake”. I had never seen or tasted cake like it before and I always thought she must have invented it, but I’ve heard other folks say they have heard of something similar. It is basically a yellow sheet cake and a warm, delicious, chocolatey pudding sauce you make from scratch in a saucepan to spoon over the cake. So yummy :)~ This is definitely a tradition I will pass down through the family.
Baking with my grandma and now baking with my granddaughter :)
sigh…the memories
Baking Christmas cookies with my mom!
My favorite baking memory is baking christmas cookies w my mom & sister. I remember putting the frosting & sprinkles on w the sounds of christmas music in the background.
We always made The Peanuts Gang sugar cookies when the holidays came around. After Mom passed away and the cookie cutters got lost, I found them again on Ebay so I could keep up the tradition.
Baking all kinds of Christmas cookies and treats with my mom and giving them as sweet gifts to friends and neighbors would be my favorite baking memory!
One year, at Christmas, i was baking peanut butter cookies with my mom. She had let me be in charge, and we made about 5 batches. I was talking and laughing, she was sitting and reading. It was a blast. Unfortunately on the third batch I was throwing in a cup of this and a cup of that, as the recipe called for, and discovered that I had thrown in a cup of baking soda. That discovery was made on the test bite of the first cookie out of the oven. It was terrible. My mom then tasted the batter and declared it was only fit for the dogs. They wouldn’t touch it either.
Baking with my brother is always fun – I like having a sous chef!
My six daughters and I had fun cooking together. One Thanksgiving we had a pie baking contest between the girls. Each girl made a pie and then Dad judged them. It was pure fun and we had lots of pies that year! Everyone was a winner.
I am the resident sugarholic in my family and while I can’t cook to save my life, I love baking for my friends and family. Unfortunately, my dad is a diabetic and unable to taste most of my creations. A while back, I decided to make something he could eat too.
So off I went, googling sugar-free recipes and substituting etc. What came out though was flavorless weird goo. i was so embarassed but my dad never let it show. he was so happy that I made something for him that he forced himself to eat through it. :)
My great-aunt Bea was a fabulous cook and baker. She could make scraps of bread taste wonderful. My best baking memory of her was one of her wild blueberry pies. She would send us children off to pick blueberries and tell us that if we brought back enough, she would bake us a pie. She never seemed to use a recipe and later on in life when I asked her how to make her famous oil pie crust, she would say that you “just put in enough to make it look like this.” Still miss her.
My son’s birthday cakes…it is a treasure to make him the cake he wants depending on what he is hooked on that time of the year…
My favorite baking memory is making and decorating sugar cookies with my Grandma and cousins every Christmas. I still do it with my kids each year!!
My mom and I loved to bake together. Not only did we bake a million pecan pies, but so much more! Our favorite was a fresh coconut cake with many layers!
My Favorite baking memory is watching my grandmother and her best friend bake cakes and pies all day long. I got the joy of licking the bowl of batter when they were done, it was the best days of my life at 4years old! A memory I will never forget and always Treasure. Now that my grandma is 91 she gets the joy of eating the things that I bake! Pure Joy! :-)
My favorite baking memory is making pumpkin pies with my mom on Thanksgiving Eve :)
I didn’t bake with my parents growing up but am definitely making up for it now with my kids. We love making cake pops (still hoping to make it to your Pop Stars page one day!) and we’re making tons of memories along the way!
I love baking during the Christmas season. My mom would enlist the help of all us girls and we’d bake huge batches of cookies to store in the freezer. Then, once we built up our supply, we’d haul them all out and assemble cookie trays to give away as gifts. It was so much fun!
During Christmas, My grandmother would always bake a cream cheese spritz cookie and form them into the shape of wreaths. The holly wreaths were a family favorite. When she passed away, our family went without holly wreaths and I really didn’t remember them because I was so little. A few years ago, I made the wreaths. I had no idea how enthusiastic my family would be when they got them back on the table. It was great to see my Dad and uncles so excited. Needless to say Holly Wreaths are again a Christmas necessity.
When in third grade, there was a recipe for cookies in my math book. My mother let me make them and take them to school to share with my class. What great fun! Not surprizing that I became a math teacher!
baking cookies with my girls
I loved baking southern livings watermelon cookies one summer with my mom to take to a neighborhood trip to the lake. Everyone loved them and I knew that there was something special about baking that could make people happy
Baking chocolate chip cookies with my grandma!!
Oh my, those pies look delicious.
Favorite baking memory…Christmas baking with my mom…soft sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles, homemade caramels (lots and lots of stirring)….now I (try to) do it with my kids.
Baking pumpkin pies with my mom on Thanksgiving morning will always be my favorite baking memory.
My good friend Bethany has never been what one would call “domestic”. She actually hated cooking and baking. When I discovered cake pops and brought some to work one day, she fell in love… and actually wanted to learn how to make them! She came over one afternoon and we worked together to make them. I remember she kept saying “This is SO messy!” But when they were done she was shocked because they tasted good. I think she expected that the outcome wouldn’t be good because she had no experience baking!
I have lots of memories baking and cooking, but teaching my friend how to bake something is definitely one of my favorites.
My grandmother was an amazing baker. i can remember going to her house and spending the whole entire day baking raised cinnamon rolls. From making the dough, watching it rise and “punching” it down, all the way to biting into that first hot cinnamon roll hours later. It was a family event I will always cherish.
Baking chocolate chip cookies with my mom and making a beating motion with our hands, going faster and faster as we sped up the mixer.
My father and I would make a Christmas poke cake every Christmas. It was something so simple but it was something we would do every Christmas until he passed. I love how baking can bring people together and it gives such a extra dimension to memories.
My birthday is October 8th and this would be an incredible gift-thanks for the chance to win! My favorite baking memory is actually for something savory, which is crazy b/c I’m baking sweets all the time. It’s the first time I ever baked with my MIL, and we made scalloped potatoes from her old recipe card. I’d never had a pleasant experience baking with anyone else (I’m a solo baking kinda gal), but was so much fun and I enjoyed it so much that we made it a tradition to make scalloped potatoes for Christmas every year together. :)
I loved baking with my mom, so right now my favorite memory is actually carrying on that tradition and having my two little girls help me bake. Most often we bake my husbands favorite chocolate chip cookies. My girls love measuring everything out and, of course, taste testing them after they are baked.
My and my friend were attempting to make home-made marshmallows and we completely failed the first patch just burnt it,it was horrible but really funny at the end we tried again and succeeded :]
My favority baking memories were making banana nut bread with my dad and he was doing his best to follow the instructions. He tried to scrap down the side of the bowl with a spoon and the mixer going and the spoon got all caught up in the beaters. We all laughed for a long time….
One of my favorite moments is when my children wanted to bake the rainbow cake for their brothers birthday. They all got in the kitchen and had so much fun dying the batter different colors. It turned out so awesome! They even made a rainbow fondant for the top, all with me just watching.
When my husband and I were dating and he was stationed overseas, my friend and I baked every type of cookie we could think of and mailed them to him. We had made so many that they lasted almost until he came home, even though he shared them. For some reason he now gives approximate amounts when he asks for baked goods :)
Love Williams-Sonoma, Love KitchenAid, Love YOU!!!!! I loved baking with my daughter and niece when they were very young. I measured the ingredients and they took turns pouring them into the bowl. Now both are new mothers of little girls and I can’t wait to do it all over again.
Every year I would make mini loaves of pumpkin and zucchini bread in October for friends and neighbors. Just me and my Grandma Bird. She is gone now, but I still love to make them with my daughter and someday my granddaughter!!
I remember when I was baking peanut butter brownies with my mum and we couldn’t read the markings on the oven anymore, so we used a smaller oven grill… thing… that apparently worked just like an oven, but a lot smaller in size. Unfortunately, we didn’t bother cutting off the excess baking paper and it caught on fire as soon as the brownies were in the oven. We pulled the pan out and drenched it in water. The brownie batter was totally ruined. But it’s all good. We had only put half the batter in that pan. :P
Baking sugar cookies with my grammy. :)
My favorite part of baking/cake decorating is having my 3 daughters help…the way it brings us together is amazing. Each one gets a job…and at the end we created a beautiful edible piece of art, together!
When I was younger my dad would help us bake cupcakes out of the box or attempt to make nestle chocolate chip cookies from scratch for dinner. We could never get the cookies right. Now we still bake deserts for dinner every once in a while.
My mom is a wonderful baker and every Christmas, my sister and I would help my mom with making a variety of Christmas cookies. My favorite memories were making sugar cut out cookies of Santa, reindeers, trees, ornaments, angels and bells. My mom would also make us VIctorian ginger bread villages. I love the smell of baked goods filling a home during the holiday season and I am looking forward to baking with my mom and sister this Christmas!
My grandmother baking anything… every time i would go visit her she would bake for me pies, cookies, cakes…
My favorite moment in my baking history was when I busted my butt in a tiny kitchen throwing tonnes of dishes together that I had never made before, taking them to a Halloween party, and someone saying that they would PAY for my treats. It made me feel really good and I’ve never forgotten it.
My favorite baking memory was when I attempted at making brownies as a treat for my Dad when I was little. I mixed everything and poured it into a pan with my Mom’s help. she said Dad would love them! However I had already tasted them and knew he would not. Later, I learned I mixed the vegetable and vinegar! :o Needless to say, Dad never got hose brownies and we had to start over. :)
Rolling out dough for cookie cutouts is sometimes an arduous task. But every time I do this, and my 8yo daughter and I make holiday-specific cookies to share with our family & friends, it’s so worth it to see the smile on her face. Even moreso, what I enjoy is the love she puts into decorating her cookies and the joy she has in giving them to the special people in her life. I hope that she will remember our tradition, the way it makes her feel, the way it makes others feel — and roll out that dough for her own children someday…
My favorite baking memory was when I tried to make macarons, following the recipe I found here. Only a few came out pretty because I’m really bad at piping but it tasted like macarons and even got compliments despite the appearance.
My favorite baking memory would probably be the time my roommate and I baked chocolate chip cookies. It went well considering we had no measuring cups at all. We ended up using a rice measuring cup for everything, even the teaspoon and tablespoon measurements. Totally worth it.
My favorite baking memory is making icebox penguin cookies with my friend for our boyfriends for valentines day and decorating all of them!
I remember baking cookies with my grandma when I was little. I used to stand on a kitchen chair or sit on the counter because I was too short to reach the counter!
My Mom used to bake her famous gingerbread cookies every Christmas – after she prepared the dough, she would roll it out and let me pick the shapes we would cut them into. After letting me cut them, she would take care of the baking and let me nibble on leftover dough bits. Then we would frost them together – of course the color was always my choice (lots of blues and aquas rather than typical holiday colors!). Since moving away from home this is one tradition I really miss!!
Oh, I have so many wonderfull baking memories. But maybe the best one was when me and my figure skater friends wanted to arrange a super baking day. We started baking at 7 am and continued until 8 pm. Then we just invited all our friends to come by to eat. Oh all those happy and satisfied faces! :)
My best memory is when my mom decided to try making my Great Grandma’s brown sugar candy recipe. We did not have a candy thermometer and thought it had been cooking long enough and poured the mixture into another pan to go into the fridge. We checked back a few minutes later and it looked pretty runny so Mom took it out and reheated it. Needlesstosay by the time she repoured it it was so thick it didn’t spread at all in the pan. It was hilarious!
I have baked muffins with my children since they could walk and I love the memories when they were little trying to figure out how to pour the milk and crack (smush) the eggs. They’re much older now but its so great to remember this when they were so little.
Cookie baking for the holidays with my son. They make the dessert table look so festive.
Baking my first pie two months ago. I was never much of a pie maker, and I didn’t grow up in a traditional family that did much baking. Making my first pie was so satisfying: rolling out to dough, flopping it over the pie tin, filling it with blackberry goop, watching blackberry pie bubble in the oven – it still gets me giddy just thinking about it!
uuh shiny!! :)
Making traditional yellow cake with chocolate frosting, it was a standard dessert in my house when I was a kid.
the best baking memories i have all consist of my mom and i baking for the holidays and the first time getting to see someones face when they get that tray full of bakes goodies that we made for them. I was about 5 then and i’ve been in love with baking ever since.
My favorite baking memory is from a time when I was baking with my Grandmother. We were making some cookies and her KitchenAid was accidentally turned on when we had it tilted back to add some of the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients went flying all over the kitchen! We found cookie dough everywhere for quite some time! It is something we still laugh about regularly!
My favorite baking memory is of me ‘helping’ my grandmother make peach cobbler every time her side of the family would have a get together.