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!
I was very pregnant with my fourth child, Lydia and it was December. My feet were so swollen that I could not bake Christmas cookies with my other three kids. I remember feeling so sad until my sister who has no baking skills came to my rescue and baked with my kids. The kitchen was a mess as were the Christmas cookies. But the time they shared with their aunt and sitting there watching them with my feet propped up is something I will never forget. It was so special.
My favorite memory as of late is the first time I made my own puff pastry. You put it in the oven and just wonder how this flat dough is going to puff up. I can honsetly say that I praised God when I peeked in the oven and saw puff pastry!
my favorite baking memory is from when I was in kindergarden. our teacher gave out a cranberry bread recipe for thanksgiving and i had so much fun making it, 20+ years later I still make it every year!
Whenever I was a little girl, my grandmother would bake, but only for special occasions. She would make fudge for christmas only and that was our gift. Then she would make banana pudding for family reunions. I never saw her make her fudge, till I was about sixteen(A couple of months, before she passed away actually), but I was lucky enough to help her make banana pudding before every family reunion. It was a huge honor for me and nothing was better than making it with my grandmother. After she passed, I wanted to keep her tradition going and still do to this day. I show up at the family reunion, every year, with Grandma Copelands Banana Pudding.
I like baking christmas cookies with my two daughters, it is very important because my mom did not do those things with me and now that she had pass I wish she did. I want my daughters to have those moments of us being together.
My favorite baking memory is making Christmas cookies with my children. It always was a lot of fun!
Baking eclairs with my grandmother. She had a famous recipie and taught me all her tricks!
My very favorite memories are the years I baked with my son, beginning at age 3. We baked year round and delivered to our elderly neighbors. He is older now and is to be married next week! I look forward to baking with a grandchild someday!
My favorite memories are still being made. My 4 yr old son loves to help me bake. We make carrot cake muffins, pumpkin muffins, and all kinds of cookies. He’s also my official spoon licker!
My favorite baking memory is baking with my grandma as a child, all my cousins would come and we would bake cookies and make homemade frosting to decorate with and then serve the cookies at Christmas.
As a child I remember baking cookies with my grandma. And now as an mom my favorite is each Christmas Eve a couple of my friends come by with their children and I get all the kids together to bake and decorate cookies for Santa. It’s a huge mess and they end up eating way to much suger but we’ve been doing it for about 7 years, and it’s the best time.
My favorite baking memory is icing and decorating the cutout cookies my Mom made every Christmas from her Mother’s recipe. Now I make them and my kids help ice and decorate them. I have even invited their friends over, and discovered that some, even though teens, had never iced a cookie before!
My favorite is making Christmas cookies with my family. We have lots of old recipes for Italian cookies, and we make lots and lots of each kind – we eat them from Thanksgiving through New Years!
My favorite baking memory is making polvorones (a traditional Filipino cookie/candy) with my sister when we wer 10 and 11. It was our first time making them and we didn’t want my mother how many we burnt so we ended throwing all the burnt ones over our back fence. The dog next door had a great snack.
My favorite baking memories are with my mother. We used to spend several says baking every cook, bar and candy you could imagine for Christmas. She would stay up for hours at night after work slaving over the stove and oven. I remember the table being full of tins of this or that and then the week of Christmas she would make up big beautiful trays and give it to our family, friends, teachers and neighbors. Everyone looked forward to this and I now carry on this traditional in her memory. :)
My best baking memory reoccurs every holiday season. It is the making of chocolate chip meringue cookies. As a child I would follow my mom around the kitchen attempting to help, and groan at that fact that I had to wait till the morning to enjoy them. As the years went on the job of preparing got passed down to me :)
I loved your Pecan Pie memory! I think there is something so special about the Holidays and the sweet recipes we bake for our loved ones :)
My favorite baking memory was when I was about 10 or so and I visited my great in Louisiana. My great aunt is a huge baker and she had already planned for us to mix up a carrot cake for that night’s activity. We shredded the carrots, got out of all the spices, and just when we were about to add the cake flour I dropped the box and it went everywhere. It looked like snow in the kitchen air. I remember feeling so awful and my great aunt just couldn’t stop laughing and smiling. Before we were through we had cream cheese frosting all over our faces as well.
The carrot cake was delicious of course, but I will never forget how much fun we had together baking that night.
Oh my goodness, that mixer is gorgeous!
I have quite a few baking memories, it’s hard to choose a favorite.. but I’d have to say there is a recent favorite: my oldest (7-year-old) niece spent the weekend with us in June. We spent an afternoon strawberry picking at a berry farm along the coast, and then came home and made fresh strawberry shortcakes! She was the best kitchen helper I could have asked for – eager to help chop the butter into little pieces, measure the dry goods, mix and scoop the batter, and mix the fresh whipped cream. I was amazed at how much she has grown and thrilled to have her help in the kitchen!
I have the most precious picture of her holding a plate of shortcakes, with the biggest smile on her face. :)
When I was 13, I baked a 10-layer chocolate torte for my “how-to” project. It entailed pouring cake batter into circles drawn on parchment (didn’t have any…used paper bags) and a swiss meringue filling. And I had to do this THREE times before I wrote up my report. My poor mother washed all my dishes and was amazingly patient while I destroyed her kitchen. But the feeling of triumph when the torte was complete…indescribable! And it was delicious!
My favorite baking memory now by far is when my daughter was almost 2, I was making your Hello Kitty cakepops for a customer and she wanted to help. She gets so excited when she hears that I’m making cakepops. You see cakepops are her absolute favorite. She helped crumble the cake and mix in the frosting. I will never forget how her eyes lit up while she was helping and the sense of accoplishment she felt when we were finished. She was so proud of her cakepops. And I was so proud and in awe of her!
My favorite memory of baking, is baking with my Grandma. I got my love of baking from her. We used to make cinnamon buns, oliebollen (dutch apple fritters), cookies, butterhorns… yumm!
My favorite baking memory is baking sugar cookies every Christmas with my babysitter growing up. Each child was able to make one plate of cookies to bring home to their parents. My favorite part was decorating the cookies. She had a bunch of different colors of icing and tons of sprinkles to decorate with.
My favorite baking memory would probably be from this week. My 5 year old is very concerned that she doesn’t know how to cook a good dinner and so she has been helping me make our dinner each night. It is very adorable when she gets her apron on and asks “What next Mommy?”
My fondest baking memory is one summer at my Grandma’s, along with my cousins, we baked cookies to take to the kids hospital and pass out.
Our favorite holiday food tradition is broccoli cheese casserole….sounds strange, but it’s amazing! We do it every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sometimes for birthdays too!
My Mom was a true baker and cook, you could copy her recipe but couldn’t duplicate it, she would toss a handful of this or that to a recipe. Mom baked with love. I shared her sugar cookie recipe in a third grade cookbook my class made, but forgot to include 6 cups of sifted flour. It’s a family secret. I loved watching her mix the cookies in her big yellow pyrex bowl. I miss being able to watch her prepare goodies for her family, I miss her.
I always loved watching my grandmother make her cinnamon cake!
I remember watching my mom bake a blueberry cheesecake pie with no gelatin added. Everyone loves it so much, that we often give them away as Christmas gifts to relatives and friends. It made me realize that I had a soft spot for baking, and eventually led to my experimenting with other baked goods.
i bake cupcakes constantly, and 99% of the time, i hold my boyfriend hostage as my baking assistant. he hates the painstaking process and is pretty vocal about it, but he does it anyway. (to make matters worse, he’s much more of a cookie person than a cupcake enthusiast like me.) one time, .i challenged him to make his OWN cupcakes (to prove that making them is harder than it looks). it was the funniest thing to watch silently from the sidelines, as he made one mistake after another. but when he finished, i have to admit, they were very good for a rookie. :)
My favorite memory is my mom & sister baking our favorite apple pie for the holidays from the same cookbook that is completely falling apart at this point!
My grandma would always let me lick the beaters– such a small thing, but it seemed like the biggest treat in the world!
It’s not really baking but making Olie Bolen, a dutch donut treat. We used to sit at the kitchen table waiting for the hot Olie Bolen’s to come out of the oil. Sprinkle with icing sugar and eat as many as you can. Great memories in Grandma’s kitchen with my cousins :)
making mince pies is the best thing ever
Just the smell of things baking in the oven floods my mind with tons of memories! Christmas cookie baking, Thanksgiving preparations, and every day cakes made, lovingly, by my mom are only a few!
Making little pumpkin bread loaves with my Mom during the holidays.
My Mom and I get together and bake all of our Christmas cookies together, we spend the whole day baking and laughing, I am glad I still get to spend this time with my Mom!
A few Christmas’s ago my mom was here helping me bake cookies and my dad was making Poor Man Soup. Good baking memories.
My favorite baking memory is baking spritz cookies with my mom..I was in charge of sprinkles
I remember a specific instance of baking a carrot cake with my grandmother for my mom’s birthday. I was 4 or 5 and she let me help her with the hand mixer.
My favorite baking memory is when I first tried making Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls and the whole house filled with the smell of the rolls. I made a coffee glaze instead of maple, and it was scrumptious!
Oh goodness I think my favorite baking memory was the very first time I ever made pie. I had already taught myself to do most of the baking that I knew and I was about 10 so finally getting to bake with my grandmother was a really great treat, especially since that was the last time I ever got to see her.
One of my favorite baking memories would have to be my Papaws homemade pies & biscuits. I always remember going to visit & watching/helping him bake. He has inspired me in so many ways to bake & cook. He was a amazing executive Chef & baker. I think of him the most when I bake. He was a amazing man!
I love cooking and baking with my daughter each Holiday! But most of all I love watching her make homemade dumplings each holiday season. My Mom (gone now) taught her many years ago as a little girl. She would sit on the counter and watch / help my Mom cook! She is carrying on our family tradition!
My mom used to let me make the peanut-butter criss-cross cookies, since you could stir the dough, roll it out and criss-cross it by hand. :) It’s one of my favorite memories of feeling important and big enough to help out in the kitchen.
My mom wasnt a big one for baking (THAT skipped a generation!) but she would make no-bake cookies. Fudgy, peanut buttery, blobs of goodness. She taught me how to make them, and they always remind me of a winters day, with that smell in the house and watching Oklahoma!
I remember going to my Grammy’s house on the weekends and she always had the kitchen ready for us to make no-bake cookies. Ok, so it is not a “baking” memory but it is a kitchen memory. We used to look foward to the spoon at the end she would give us to lick. LOVE the good ol’ days!
My favorite baking memory is skipping school with my best friend and baking cookies!
My sister and I would make tons of Christmas Cookies and divide them. My favorite was when I came home from college and we made Rum balls – and used a lot of rum. We laughed so hard that day.
I have neat memories of baking homemade braided Challah bread with my daughters to give to the St. Joseph’s Table charity at church.
I favorite baking memory started with my two sons. Every year around Christmas we would bake cookies and I would let them decorate them. I now carry on the tradition with my grandchildren.
My favorite baking memory is my husband and I teaming up to bake literally hundreds and hundreds of different cookies to give to our family and friends. We would love how the house smelled so delicious after and we ate our fair share of cookies too!
My grandmother and mother would work for weeks at Christmas time making cookies. Our favorites were always the fattigmands and sugar cookies which us kids would decorate of course! My sisters, cousin, and our kids all get together and still make a few of our faves, like the ones I mentioned. Memories are still being made!!
Some of my favorite baking memories were made while spending the Saturday before Christmas, baking cookies with my mom, sister and aunt. We would have two ovens going, two mixers and cooling racks everywhere. It was a day of laughter and stories. Now that both my mom and aunt have passed, I cherish these memories even more.
Pretty much everything I know about baking I learned from my mother. I remember as a child she would always make these cinnamon rolls called Morning Rolls. She would make up the dough the previous day, mixing it down several times during the day, then in the evening form it into pans and pans of cinnamon rolls. It seemed like every kitchen surface was covered with those raising beauties. Then, in the morning she popped each one in turn into the oven, frosted them and ahhhhh! Nothing can be better!
My favorite baking baking memory is Christmas morning when I was a teenager. My older siblings came home Christmas eve and spent the night and everyone, from my little sister to my oldest brother chipped in to make a big family breakfast. Lots of silliness laughter and good food.
I’m sure like many ladies, we began baking in our mother’s kitchen. I did also just not quite as often as I would’ve liked. But I do remember each Christmas my mom and I would make these light flaky cookies called ratacoogans (sp?). They were an Italian cookie and I wish I had the recipe to make them with my children. My mom has been gone 7 years and no one in the family has this recipe, nor do we know exactly what they were or how to spell the name of it to repeat them. lol. I also very clearly recall the last Christmas season I had with my mom and we made dozen’s of mason jar gifts for our friends and neighbors. We just layered dry ingredients for cookies, breads and cocoas and decorated the jars up festively! Happy Holidays to you all.
One of my favorite baking memories from childhood is helping my mother cutting butter into flour for her marathon Irish Soda Bread baking days before St. Patrick’s Day.
my mom and i used to bake every new years eve in preparation for the rose parade. it’s now a tradition that we have to bake a ton of yummy things on dec 31st!
My favorite baking memory has to be making divinity with my Grandmother. Although I hated the stuff, it was such a joy to be in the kitchen with her.
I love baking with my sweet daughter. The togetherness creates memories that I just treasure!
Watching my grandmother knead her yeast rolls she made daily. Many years layer that memory fostered a desire to learn how to bake with yeast. There’s been no fear as I warmly remembered her arthritic hands lovingly knead the dough.
Learning to make a traditional Armenian dessert with my grandmother 25 years ago still melts my heart. A time I will never get back and a memory I hold close to my heart everyday!
My favorite baking memory is getting with my sisters and mom on Christmas Eve to bake hundreds of cookies. My favorite part was always using the many different holiday cookie cutters and decorating the cookies afterward. :)
One of my favorite baking memories occurred two years ago. As a child I always dreamt of getting an Easy Bake oven, but sadly never received one. And then two years ago, my older brother decided to surprise me with an Easy Bake oven as my Christmas gift! When I finally got to use it for the first time, I was so ecstatic (even though I was 21 and old enough to use a real oven by then) and it made a wonderful memory =]
I love cooking with my little girl. She is 2 1/2 and loves to mix with me. No matter what she is doing, if she hears bowls clanking around she will come running into the kitchen saying “I want to cook with you”. I love it!
My favorite baking memories have been making a special cake for each of my boys on their birthdays. Last year I made Pokemon cake pops for my oldest which were a hit with the kids!
My favorite baking has always been done with my grandmother’s
Model 1 Sunbeam Automatic Mixmaster ten speed mixer. This beauty was made in 1935 and, until recently, was still going strong.
I loved making the cookies and other sweets that my grandmother would make every Christmas and I have kept the tradition going since she passed away years ago. It is always like having her in my kitchen when I get out her recipes, in her handwriting, and whip up some memories.
For the last couple of years, I made cake pops for my best friend’s birthday. Two years ago, I made golden snitch cake pops. Last year, I made her one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater cake pops! I haven’t decided what I’m going to make her this year. Perhaps this new mixer and gift card will inspire me!
My mom had me baking in the kitchen fairly early as a kid. Our most favorite thing to bake was a brownie recipe that my grandmother made for my father, then my mother made for our family, and now I make it for my family! Yes, it’s that good!! Now I have my 2 girls in the kitchen with me, and we have started a tradition of pumpkin bread every year for Christmas!! It really wouldn’t be Christmas with out the pumpkin bread!! :)
Every year all the women in our family get together a couple of weeks before Christmas and we spend an entire day baking/making candy. We all end up with giant totes full of sweets to take home.
My favorite baking memory is with my mom. Every year around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays she bakes her special “angel crisp” cookies and “holly leaves.” We would always try to sneak little bites of the cookie dough when she wasn’t looking, but being a mother, she always saw us. So she would give us tiny little balls of dough each time – it became our thing :)
Definitely baking with my grandma as a little girl. I would spend a week at a time with her over the summers, and her orange chiffon cakes, peanut butter blossom cookies, lemon bars, and cream puffs were definitely heavenly : ) I love to bake grandma’s recipes with my own girls these days. Sweet times!
Baking our first batch of ‘Pillsbury’ sugar cookies for the holiday season with my mom and sister because we had burnt the first batch. And I would remember sneaking into the fridge to snack on cookie dough. (Woops! Sorry but I’m not sorry).
Those were the days! :-)
How awesome is this??? And not only days after I killed my kitchenaid making marshmallows (so sad) but the giveaway ends less than a week before my birthday!!! ;) my favorite baking memory- well I have so many but I think last year was one of my favorites when we baked goodies for a bunch of friends for the 12 days of Christmas – and seeing my kids take so much joy in giving to others – especially running up to the doors!!! It was such an awesome experience!!! Thanks so much for the opportunity and good luck to everyone!!!!
For my 21st birthday last year I decided to host a dinner party for all my friends. Of course everything was late and all the timing was off so dinner took ten years to create, but things still tasted good. Its one of my favorite baking memories though because my closest friends helped me make all the desserts, and it was just us in the kitchen laughing together and celebrating life.
Baking chocolate cake with my kids
Baking & decorating holiday cookies with my kids!
I always bake vanilla and nuttela cupcakes when my friend come over. Nuttela cupcakes = good times
Whenever I baked chocolate cake (my kids favorite) they would fight over the batter bowl… I’d let each one of them scrape the bowl once and everybody would be happy.
My little 4’11” Italian grandmother taught me how to make wine cookies when I was young. She had this great finished basement that had a full kitchen. We would be down there for hours rolling and twisting hundreds of cookies.
My mom would have us help her make carrot cake and chocolate frosting whenever we were gonna have friends over, growing up. Good times!
My Mom was not much of a baker when we were growing up, but without fail, every Christmas she’d dig out the hand-twist cookie press and bake batches of little green Christmas trees, white snowflakes and multi-colored stars. I have that old cookie press now and just can’t seem to get rid of it, even though it’s been replaced by an automatic version! Thanks for bringing up happy memories!
There’s a goofy photo I have, of me holding up a 9″ cake pan with the first thing I ever baked on my own in it: a baked apple pancake (the A from the ABC cookbook). I was 7 years old and had had a gap-toothed smile and HUGE, frosted pink framed glasses; my dad is crouching behind me in the photo to get down to hight. I remember that it was a snow day too and my brothers were eating waffles with chocolate chips in them already but I had to bake something for myself because, uh, why not?
I didn’t know how to bake until my daughter was born 13 years ago. I started to learn from books, internet, and friends. Now she is very proud to have a mom who knows how to bake. Our favorite baking memories included baking different kind of cookies, cupcakes, and cakes every Sunday for Sunday school children. All our effort paid off when we saw the smiles on the children’s face when they tasted our baked goods.
I had just started baking and was still in high school, my boyfriend’s mom had a food store (sold pre-prepared meals and baked goods). I decided to “make-up” my own recipe (before the time of blogs me google) of a PB&J cookie it my grandmother’s peanut butter cookie. I took it to school and then to my boyfriend’s house, and his mom loved it so much that she sold them in her store for awhile!
My favorite baking memory is when my girlfriend threw an almost-impromptu Halloween Baking contest…in the middle of August. Having NO experience, I searched for something easy. Ignoring this advice, I made baklava. Bloody, flesh looking baklava. I won the best tasting award!
Every Sunday, after morning church service, my family and I would go to my grandmothers and eat lunch. I remember sitting at the bar watching my grandmother cook lunch. She would always make everything from scratch!!! Great memories!!
My favorite baking memory is the first time me and my best friend made peanut butter cookies together. We were 12 and 13 and had found a recipe for peanut butter cookies in an old cookbook of her moms. We started baking at about midnight, and had a good long laugh when the dough was so thick it stopped the mixer from moving! They were some of the best peanut butter cookies, and still one of my go to recipes.
Not actually baking, but my grandma always made dipped chocolates for Christmas. I remember from the time I was just little I would stand on a chair in the kitchen and help her. Now my own daughter does the same thing when I make the same chocolates every Christmas. And each year I can’t help but think of Grandma and all the memories we made in that kitchen.
I loved baking with my grandma when I was young. Now I can’t wait to bake with my daughter.
Loved making my kid’s birthday cakes when they were little. Took me ALL day to star a character cake. One time I had done bugs bunny for my middle son. I put it in the oven to keep it out of harms way. When I took it out when company came over, I seen he had already cleaned the center (frosting) of the ears out. It was a good laugh.
I do lots of baking still and canning from my big garden.(105 quarts this year.) Nothing better than using my own pasta sauce for my casseroles and other baking dishes. I recently got into dehydrating stuff. It’s FUN too!
It would have to be in the kitchen with my maw-maw making Christmas Eve foods and prepping for Christmas dinner and her radio would be on 24/7 Christmas music. I can still see her small hands, taking her rings off, and making the dressing. Good times, great memories!
Baking Christmas cookies with my sister! One yearI told her I was coming over and needed to make shortbread cookies, bless her heart she went and bought two dozen eggs for my cookies…
Baking and decorating sugar cookies with family after Christmas eve dinner is always something I look forward to doing around the holidays!
I have the fondest memories of baking brownies with my mom, grandma and sister. To this day they are still my favorite!
Baking Spritz cookies with my dad for Christmas. Baking cookies for the Christmas cookie exchange with my sisters and making new baking memories with my kids, who I’ve convinced we are the best bakers in history and we will one day open our own bakery. One day….
Learning how to make my grandmother’s array of Christmas cookies, from snowballs to pazzelles. She was (and still is!) the most amazing cook and baker I know.
I love to bake and create since I was very young. From cakes to cookies to pies….my memories are from who i make them for special birthday cakes for kids and family members
My favorite baking memory is making christmas cookies with my sister when i was still in elementary school. it was a great time that brought us together despite our 8 year age gap.
Many years ago I asked my Dad what his absolute favorite pie was. He said that during WWII, a beautiful Dutch lady made him a Dutch Apple Pie, and that was the best pie ever.
I worked and worked on the perfect apple pie for him since he was my hero and sweetheart.
I finished the pie, served it to him, but my Dad and Mom kept laughing!
He finally admitted that he made up the Dutch lady story to aggravate my Mom!
After that I made the Dutch Apple Pie every Thanksgiving, and many guests got to hear what a stinker he was!
During Christmastime my mom, sister, grandma and aunts all make our traditional family cookies, butterhorns that have to be apricot flavored and Christmas tree cookies that have to be lemon flavored because that’s how they’ve always been made since my mom and aunts were little. It’s a family tradition that is so special to be a part of!
My favorite baking memory was teaching my nephew how to make chocolate cupcakes when he was about 5 or 6. The kitchen looked like an artic warzone by the time we were done, but it was so fun
My favorite baking memory would be baking (and cooking in general) with my sisters’ kids. They love to help in the kitchen! When they spend the night at Auntie’s house, it’s a treat to be able to make something like cookies for a snack with our movie.
My favorite pastime is making fruitcake cookies with my mom. I always measured everything out for her as a kid. I now make them myself too :-)
I have fond memories of baking sugar cookies with my mom for various holidays and decorating them with all kinds of fun sprinkles!
My favorite baking memory is making Christmas sugar cookies with my high school girlfriends. We all got together to bake and decorate for the afternoon. Even though life has drawn us in different directions, we still get together every year to bake and catch up!
My grandma would make little jelly tarts out of leftover pie crust. We’d cut big pieces with her biscuit cutter and then she’d let me cut little holes in the top pieces with her sewing thimble. Bake and fill with jelly. Very creative.
We would always bake something sweet on Sundays after church and naps. My favorite is chocolate drop cookies with oatmeal and coconut. One time my younger siblings wanted to surprise Mom while she napped and made the batter on the stovetop using a plastic bowl (they were very young). Mom sure was surprised when she woke up to the smell of burning chocolate and melting plastic. We still have a good laugh about that.
All throughout high school and college, my best friends and I would spend an entire day making chocolate Spritz cookies over winter break. We realized that one of the presses gave us trilobite fossil shapes, so now I associate ancient sea creatures with neon frosted cookie sandwiches and winter.
my favorite baking moments are with my two girls! we bake cookies and cake pops together. it’s great seeing their creativity come out when they decorate.
My favorite baking memory is when I finally learned to make my great aunt’s amazing banana bread from scratch. My mom is not really a baker, but she bounced at the opportunity to teach me her favorite aunt’s recipe. Now I’m the one that always makes it for my family!
My favorite baking memories is with my mom during the holidays. The kitchen table & the counters would be covered with holiday goodies. To this day, we still get together to bake before the holidays!
My favorite memory is cooking in the kitchen with my grandma Ware. She was always so willing to let us make messes for the sake of learning.
This summer I took my four year old daughter with me on a mission trip. We cooked in the kitchen with four other ladies (including my mom and mother-in-law!) for the men who were doing construction work for a camp that serves inner city children. What a fun time and special memories made alongside each other.
Favorite baking memory…would have to be the time my girlfriend calls me over to help her whisk things cause it hurts her wrist to whisk too long.
my aunts would all bake right before thanksgiving, and my mom would bake pies. it was a wonderful time, when my sister and i were younger, watching all the sisters work together in the kitchen, with the mouthwatering smells and sights. all but 2 of the sisters have passed now, i help my mom with the pies, just 2 now.
thanks for the chance.
Making my niece’s wedding and groom’s cake with my daughter.
My favorite baking memory is definitely making Christmas cookies with my mom and siblings. 50 years later, we are still making some of the same cookies every year (although they are never quite as good as moms!).
My Favorite baking memory was making my first born child’s first birthday cake. I had no clue what I was getting myself into! It was a giant caterpillar, like the one from Baby Einstein. Each segment of the caterpillar was a half wilton ball pan. I decided to be REALLY coo coo and make each segment a different flavor. I had never baked anything but a box cake and never frosted with a piping bag. You know what though? It turned it pretty darn well and that was almost 7 years ago. Since then I have made tons of amazing cakes and I challenge myself every time.
One of my most memorable baking experiences was when I baked my mom a cake from scratch when I was young and used baking soda instead of baking powder. It was pretty salty and didn’t rise right. I’m glad I didn’t give up because I’m still baking today only now it’s for my children.
I attempted to make cake pops and those cookie dough truffles you showed on here for my brother and his friends when they graduated. I didnt like how they looked but the guys ate them up. And isnt that really what it’s all about?
My favorite baking memory is when I got my whole family to help me make cookies. It was the first time that I ever made my own cookie dough from scratch, the first time I used a cookie cutter, and the first time doing it with my entire family. My little brother and sister still remember and love participating in the entire process: making the dough, rolling out the dough, cutting out the shapes, then decorating with frosting and sprinkles. Lastly, eating it all up! Yummy!
I love making cookies with my Mom and Brother for the holidays!
I love making cherry roses with my mom and sisters every Christmas. It is just so much fun. Friends love to get them every year.
Baking with my mom and looking at the pictures in her old Betty Crocker cookbook! As a child I had my own cookie cutters and mom would give me cookie dough scraps to practice on. I especially loved her Christmas Butter cookies!!
It used to be baking with my grandma or mom as a kid, but now I love baking with my own family. Every Christmas Eve Day is about baking cookies as a family in our Christmas pajamas. I hope we always have that day together :)
I love to bake chocolate chip cookies. When I was a girl around 8 or 9, my best friend and I convinced my mom to show us how to make them. She gave us a basic intro of the kitchen, showed us the well-worn Betty Crocker cookbook, and gave us a very long leash. Over the course of a summer, we perfected our recipe and technique. I love how my Mom gave us the freedom to experiment in the kitchen, allowing us to make mistakes and learn from them. She taught us to clean up our messes and share what we baked with the people we love. I then got to teach my younger sister my secrets and we both swear by that same recipe we have been using for all these years. My mom likes to joke that she hasn’t made chocolate chip cookies since she showed me how that one time, she hasn’t needed too!
my favorite baking moment would be baking moon cake with my sister. We live in this country for almost twenty years and finally find our own way and recipes to bake the moon cake cake that fit our taste.
my favorite baking memory is making and shaping hametaschen (a triangular shaped cookie with jelly inside) with my mom. We continue to share that tradition every year.
Making Christmas candy and watching soap operas with my grandma in her kitchen while I was home on Christmas break from college – it was priceless!
The first Christmas I spent with my husband (then my boyfriend!) we decided to make sugar cookies, only we didn’t think about how long it would take to roll and cut the dough, and ended up baking in to the wee hours of the morning in my parents’ kitchen. But they were delicious, and we were too in love to care how late it was!
My happiest baking memory was making pumpkin pasties for my harry potter loving sister :)
My baking memories happened during Thanksgiving baking pies. My mom was always patient enough to let us do everything ourselves no matter how messy things got. To this day it paid off for her because now she just sits back and relaxes. Thanks to her I can say I’m a pretty decent baker.
My favorite baking memory involves my mother. My mother lived 2 hours away at the time and I was traveling to visit her for a week. I had planned to make a new apple cake together. We had such a great time catching up and creating a new dessert! I will remember that day for the rest of my life. The apple cake was divine!!
I have baked since I was a kid, but my favorite memories are baking with my little cousin when he was little and I was in my twenties. He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at four, and is a trooper. He is my baking buddy and a light in my life.
My favorite baking memory is making cake pops for the first time. It was a few years ago and it was because of those that I started getting into baking.
My favorite memory was during christmas when I learned to differentiate between tbsps and tsps.
making christmas cookies with my baby cousins and sister every christmas eve for Santa!
My favorite baking memory was baking shortbread for my grandpa. I was new to baking and not yet skilled in checking oven temperatures and pan variations in new places. I completely burned half the batch and was so upset. My dear grandad announced he loved burnt shortbread the best and ate every last piece.
one of my favorite memories is baking chocolate chip cookies with my babysitter. she always made the best cookies and i would help her by watching and pouring in the chips in the end.
My favorite baking memory is every year at Christmas my mother, sister and I would bake sugar cookies, russian tea cakes, skillet cookies, fudge, and gingerbread cookies to take to all of our neighbors who didn’t have families nearby. They were always so appreciative and said they looked forward to it every year!
I would have to say my favorite memory is baking with my late mother and her twin sister in honor of the royal wedding. We cooked in the kitchen, laughed cried and then watched the wedding we had recorded early that morning. We had a great time, and I will cherish that day forever!
On Thanksgiving, when I was little, my family would go visit our Aunt Jean’s house where she had huge pecan trees in her front yard. Aunt Jean would send all the kids to climb up the pecan trees and pick pecans that she would wash and then use in her special holiday dishes. It’s such a great memory and I miss her delicious treats :)
My mom always made he best sugar cookies cut into either Thanksgiving or Christmas shapes. She was an awesome cook and was a huge influence on my love for cooking. My sweet mom went to her heavenly home in Dec. 2007 and I imagine she is cooking up some wonderful angel shaped cookies today!
I have vivid baking memories involving my own grandma’s pecan pie recipe. My mom didn’t bake much, so holiday baking at grandma’s was extra special and oh, the smells.
My mother was never very good at teaching us to cook growing up, but my grandmother loved help in the kitchen. Although, she was good at throwing together anything and making a fabulous meal . . . I was smart enough to write some of them down as she made them so I could continue to remember her when she passed. Loved that woman more than I can say!
I always remember my mom making chocolate chip cookies from scratch and just being amazed. Watching her add everything to the bowl at the right time to make perfect cookies was a feat I never thought I would master. After years of ‘almost taste like Mom’s cookies,’ I finally got it right. I knew it as soon as I tasted the first cookie batch out of the oven. There was much celebrating in the kitchen that day!
Baking with my bff from high school, Gwen. Our first break home from college we created a 3 layer chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting in between layers then drizzled with caramel and sugar roasted peanuts and finally smothered in chocolate ganache!
My favorite baking memory is baking a chocolate coffee cake with my mother. Working with the yeast dough, rolling it out , adding the filling,rolling it up and then the delightful smell in the kitchen was wonderful. She was known for her cakes! I still make them in her special pan and feel like she is with me .
My favorite baking experience is the annual three layer chocolate cake. we have it every year.
My best memory was my grandmother Kate’s big round flower shaped sugar cookies. They were always perfectly browned, a uniform thickness and dusted with just the right amount of sugar. I have baked hundreds of them and I still cannot achieve her level of consistency.
I have a tie between 1) the winter in middle school when I decided to not only make a million different batches of cookies for friends according to their favorite flavors, but also to paint personalized cookie jars for them, and 2) when I helped my mom tie up the banana leaves for cassava suman for the first time, listening to stories from the Philippines. :)
I bake cookies every year and set them down by the fire for “Santa “
My favorite baking memory happened just last night! I baked those “Heathy Bars” and brought them to work today- they were a huge hit, and I now have the recipe saved in my recipe book! :)
Baking pies with my grandma. She was the best cook and even as your children my sister and I were always welcome in her kitchen. We would make the most fabulous pies and other Christmas treats. Our favorite part was making pie crust cookies with the leftover scraps of pie dough. I still do that with my kids today!
My family does the same with my mom’s million dollar fudge! If I helped my mom make them for the holidays, I got to lick the spoon! Definitely worth it!
My Mom wasn’t a baker so making cookies with my son when he was little was fun. But after he when to bed I had to rebake batches of cookies because those little fingers were not very clean. {didn’t want anyone getting sick}
Thanks for a chance to win.
Denise
My favorite baking moment was when my son was 5, we were making brownies and he looks at me and says the secret ingredient for our brownies is love…
My favorite baking memory was making a batch of strawberry flavored/shaped cake pops for my friend Liz.
Liz is allergic to chocolate and I wanted to find a way to thank her for a seriously AWESOME gift that she bought for me at our elementary’s school’s book fair (we are teachers)….guess what the gift was???
She purchased Bakerella’s Cake Pop book for me and I couldn’t have been happier!! I had just gotten into making cake pops for fun and she thought that I could use some more inspiration. Well…she was right!! I put my heart and soul into thos strawberry cake pops and they came out, not only tasting great, but looking FABULOUS!
My favorite baking memory with my Mom is making little mini pecan pies for friends and family during Christmas. The smell of butter, brown sugar, and toasted pecans always put me in the Christmas spirit. Even at a young age, I enjoyed forming the dough into the little pie tins and watching the oven as the little pies of goodness popped up and bubbled with sugar and yummy goodness. I can’t wait to start sharing this tradition with my baby!
My grandma always made several different kinds of cookies for Christmas. She lived in an old house that had a pull out cutting board that she used to cool the cookies on. And she kept the cookies in a non-heated room in little tins…well, she tried to (she had to keep us away from them!). I especially miss her sand tarts and molasses cookies.
My favorite baking memory is making cookies and gingerbread with my mom during christmastime. Sounds nice and traditional, right? Not at all :) We decided that, for a year, we’d break with american traditions and go back to our mexican roots: we made mexican sweet breads, mexican wedding cookies, even a spicy chocolate-chili gingerbread that we made into little “casitas”. We enjoyed these treats with the rest of my family over dinner of tamales and with a nice cup of mexican chocolate. My very favorite part of that: the smell of steaming sweet tamales and the gingerbread cooking at the same time! :)
My favorite baking memory is my grandma’s Christmas baking schedule that she would arrange around my school schedule so I could help with the cookies and the rice puff balls. It was my job to decorate!
Every year since I was little we have made these eggnog sugar cookies with a light icing. We make tons of them to give them to family and friends and we spend hours decorating them with different colors and sprinkles.
baking sugar cookies with my younger brother during the fires in San Diego YEARS ago….we werent allowed to go outside because of the smoke…so we created a HUGE mess inside
My favorite memory (and how I got started baking) is leveling out the flout & sugar and then getting to sift it. Those were my ‘jobs’ and they are still one my favorite parts of baking.
My favorite baking memories are when my mom would bake her famous butterscotch cookies with me and my sister. She always makes them at Christmas. Now she makes them with my kids too.
I will always remember the first time I made bread with my grandma. She taught me the family recipe and I have since shared it with my own children!
My grandma and i used to make something called “panetela”, which in retrospect I think was just boxed Betty Crocker Yellow cake with some grandma magic :) One day I’ll make it for my kids and pretend it’s homemade ;)
Every year I look forward to holiday baking with my daughter and husband. My husband always volunteers to watch the oven when my daughter and I make the chocolate chip cookies and my favorite Pan de Polvo (Mexican Sandies) cookies. We always have to double the recipes to make up for all the cookies he eats before they’re even cooled. I don’t know of any other husband who readily signs up for baking cookies with his wife—–I REALLY DO LOVE HIM!, (Even though he scarfs off most of my cookies).
I came home from work one day and my 12 year old daughter was so proud that she had made no-bake cookies all by herself. She found the recipe online and knew she couldn’t use the stove by herself but wanted to surprise me.
They were the very same cookies my grandma used to make (with cocoa and peanut butter and oats) and they are my absolute favorite cookie of all time!! She didn’t know it at the time, just wanted to surprise me.
Once during an ice storm when the power was out-we had an old gas oven- I made some chocolate-chocolate chip cookies and tossed the dough balls in powdered sugar for fun. They came out so pretty just as the crew came out to fix the lines so we took some out. In a very short time we had 3 crews working on our power and stopping in for cookies and hot cocoa. Lights were on on our street by nightfall!
making cupcakes with my mom!
My teenagers are always in the mood to bake and their friends love to come help them.
I TRY to tell them to read the recipe very carefully especially if they will be doubling if.
My daughter and her friend accidentally quadrupled the nutmeg in a ginger snap cookie recipe so they had to 4x everything. They obviously didn’t, so the cookies stayed in the freeze until I needed the space in my freezer!!
My favorite baking memories was during my 10th birthday, when my mom decided to go the non-traditional route and baked me a MEAT cake, that was surprisingly delicious. It was a birthday I never forget.
Baking cookies for “Santa” with my children.
I a gorgeous apple pie with my mom, for a dinner we were having. On the top, we wrote “eat me” in piecrust, cut out by cookie cutters.
My favorite baking memory is when I baked chocolate chip cookies at the age of ten and mixed up the amount of salt and sugar to put in the recipe. My Grandma tried a cookie and pretended it tasted fine. I tried it – it was awful- and just knew she was trying to be nice!!
One of my favorite baking memories is from one Christmas shortly after my husband and I got married. We went to his parents house and baked cookies and candies all day. I had never made prailines before and I was hooked. I try to make them every year!
Baking Swedish cookies with my Swedish grandmother for Christmas. 13 different kinds every year!
My favorite baking memory is when I was about 12 or 13 yrs old and I decided to bake some cookies. I was so proud of myself for making them from scratch on my own. But no one liked them!! I used baking soda instead of baking powder! It still makes me laugh when I think about the look on everyone’s faces as they took a bite.
My favorite baking memory was in kindergarten. It was me and my twin’s birthday and my mom decided to bake cupcakes (which she rarely does) for each of our classes. I remember I was so excited to help her and to taste it. It was my first time to try to crack eggs open.
My dad is polish so every Christmas when I was young we would make krusciki. Very simple and topped with powdered sugar. Everything’s better with powdered sugar!
I remember making coffee cake with my grandmother around the holidays. I was in charge of poking “holes” with my fingers in the dough and she would pour mixture of butter/sugar/cinnamon. MMMMM… those little bites where the butter pooled were the best!
I know that you mean Christmas/Thanksgiving holiday but my mom didn’t have a lot of time to bake during those times. My favorite holiday baking memory was making giant heart-shaped sugar cookies and delivering them to my grandmother’s house for Valentine’s Day. To this day I still love the combo of pink, red, and white candy corns with sugar cookies. So tasty!
I had to have been about 11 or 12 and it was maybe my second time making cookies on my own….I followed the directions completely (or so I thought) on the back of the Toll House Chocolate Chip package. Being the proud baker, I took my first bite and nearly lost it. I had forgotten to add the sugar to the cookie dough. Oh, they were so gross, but everyone tried one just to be nice and not hurt my feelings. I never again have forgotten the sugar. Now I love to bake!
When I was young just before Thanksgiving and Christmas my mother, my sister and I baked pumpkin bread in coffee cans. We gave these as holiday gifts to our teachers, coaches, mailman, garbage man, etc… The house smelled fantastic and it was so much fun! Now I bake with my daughter. But we use stoneware style coffee cans. Now I must go and bake some breads!!!!!
My favorite baking memory was making mini chocolate chip banana muffins sin nuts next to my mom who was making larger ones with nuts. I loved how I had my own special little muffins that were just mine. I still remember that “all mine!” feeling. I was probably 5.
The first time I was able to sit my baby daughter in her high chair and bake cookies with her. She was only 4 months old but I explained to her everything I was doing and what all of the ingredients were and how much I was using. It was so much fun for the two of us and now we do it all of the time!
Some of my favorite memories of baking are when we used to help our Sunday school kids cook a Thanksgiving meal from scratch and then serve it to their families. The happy faces and the feeling of accomplishment that the kids would get from making something from scratch was more than worth the weeks of prep and the very tired feet!
I used to bake for profit and when I stopped, it took me several years to regain the baking joy. Now I’m married and I love it when my husband and I bake together. Every time we hang out in the kitchen it’s like my very own fairytale. Right now his favorite thing in the world is Paula Deen’s gooey butter cake, but he’s also a huge fan of my vanilla vanilla cupcakes and salted caramel pecan bars.
I think it has to be the time I tried to make sugar cookies in Puerto Rico without air conditioning…i would get one cookie cut and have to put everything back in the fridge again…they didn’t look so good, but tasted divine.
I grew up baking with my grandma who is now gone but I still bake with my mom and she bakes with my four girls!!
Baking a half and half cookies and cream and chocolate cake with my boyfriend! :)
I remember my very first attempt at making turkey cake pops for Thanksgiving. It was with my sister and best friend. It was a total disaster but the most fun ever! We experimented by making different kinds of heads with different color beaks and the little gobbley thing that hangs down. Some turkeys even had legs sticking out at 90 degree angles! And then the turkeys kept sliding off the sticks so we would eat them up quick!
Cakepops = Love!
My mom baked everything homemade, which was the way we could afford treats. We begged for Oreos and such, but now I am thankful for the way we had it. At Christmas, our kitchen turned into a cookie jar explosion that smelled amazing. She baked every kind of cookie imaginable, with me as lucky helper and my sisters just willing tasters. She filled tins and plates to give away to family, friends, neighbors and just about anyone she came across. What a wonderful memory of warmth and giving, and deliciousness!
Making Tea Cakes with my late Mamaw. They were so good, then she would always share them with all the neighbors. Miss those times so much. Can’t wait to share those times with my grandchildren that is if my children ever give me any. I mean seriously I am 51 and am ready.
As a child, making Jiffy cakes with my Grandma! She was an excellent cook and made a mean spice cake, but by using the Jiffy mix, I was able to do most of it by myself. A great baking memory, but most of all, a great memory of time spent with my Grandma.
I don’t have one particular memory that stands out, but I love baking anything in the fall with pumpkin! Thanks for the giveaway!!
My favorite memory is my Mom baking bread. Many loaves rising, covered with dishtowels. She’s 84 and still bakes bread when the weather is cool enough and she feels up to it.