Spacer

Baking Sweet Memories

I love this time of year. When fall rolls around I get even more excited about baking than I do any other time of the year. Summer ends and the real baking begins. The last months of the year are full of special reasons to spend time with family, share smiles, and bake sweet memories.

Pecan Pies

One of my favorite baking memories is making pecan pies with my uncle. We make them every year around Christmas but I thought I’d share the recipe with you again a little early this year. It’s too good to wait until December.

My grandmother used to make these pecan pies. Her recipe made three perfect pies at a time. She made them every year for family and friends. She loved it. And when she became less able to keep up with the same quantity of pies she liked to make, my uncle Ronnie became the official pie maker. He doesn’t bake and he’s not really a dessert guy but he makes a mean pecan pie. He’s been making them now for well over a decade since my grandmother passed away. He’s continued making them every year for friends and family to carry on his Mama’s tradition. And now I bake with him every year I can and if not I make sure to bake them in my own kitchen. It’s our family’s way of keeping her with us during the holidays.

And the pies are delicious too, so that’s awesome.

Mini Pies

Of course, I had to put my touch on them and make them mini. Major cute. But I still wrap them just like she did. Simple and sweet. I love these refrigerated and I eat them like a giant pecan pie cookie.

Here’s the recipe how my grandmother made it and here’s a link to the original post with step-by-step photos demonstrated by my uncle and a little more about my grandmother.

And keep scrolling for a fun giveaway below…

Mama's Pecan Pies
Yield: 3 pies or 32 mini pies

Mama's Pecan Pies

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

___________________________________________________________________

And now, I’d love for you to share your favorite baking memory.

Holiday or any day.

You could be the lucky baker to win a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and a Williams-Sonoma Gift Card.

prize

  • Prize includes a KitchenAid Stand Mixer (valued at approximately $650) and a $200 Williams-Sonoma gift card. Approximate Retail Value: $850. Tasty!
  • Giveaway runs from September 24, 2012 at 12:00 am ET through October 8, 2012 at 11:59 pm ET. Sorry, Time’s Up! Winner will be announced this week.
  • One entry per person. You must live in the U.S. for this one (I’m sorry my international friends) and be 18 or over, too to be eligible to win.
  • To enter for a chance to win the mixer and gift card, just leave a comment on the website and share your favorite baking memory. And if you don’t have one yet, the giveaway lasts long enough for you to bake one. : )
  • One winner will be chosen at random and announced during the week of October 8th in a follow up post here on the site.
  • Note that it may take a few minutes for your comment to display.

Good luck guys and I can’t wait to read your baking memories.

___________________________________________________________________

This post is sponsored by Nestlé® Toll House® Morsels, the perfect special ingredient for all of your family’s favorite treats!


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

6,453 comments on “Baking Sweet Memories”

  1. I remember grating fresh coconut for my grandmother’s Coconut Cake. I didn’t even like Coconut Cake, but somehow she got me to do the grating!

  2. For 30 years, my sister-in-law and I set aside one Saturday in December and spent the entire day (from 10 a.m. till sometimes past midnight) baking Christmas cookies. Each session always began with tried-and-true Spritz and, by the end of the day, there would be mounds of glorious cookies piled high on her dining room table. It was the best day of the season! (I wish she hadn’t divorced my brother-in-law and moved to Florida ;-)

  3. Favorite baking memory is making chocolate chip cookie with my sisters and mom, we always ended up burning them but i was fun trying!

  4. My favorite memory is making lemon bars with my sister a very long time ago. We loved to squish the crust through our fingers as we mixed the butter and flour together! They turned out delicious every time, and still do!

  5. My husband proposed to me the day after Thanksgiving in ’08 while we were with his family in the Carolina’s for their first-ever reunion. Later that night, after all the official festivities were over, my future sister-in-laws and I were talking about our favorite Christmas memories. I mentioned that I loved baking and decorating Christmas cookies with my mom growing up, and that I missed it ever since my mom moved out of state. One of the girls suggested we go get some supplies and re-create the tradition–and we did. By the end of the night we were all covered in flour and full of dough. It was a meaningful combination of my family’s traditions and my husband’s family.

  6. I was so excited to post an entry, that I didn’t check my spelling and grammar and I sound very silly in my post. Sorry lol

  7. i remember making those stained glass sugar cookies, where you melt hard candy in the middle of the cookies. my mom used them for decorations on our christmas tree

  8. Omg these look so good(:
    I think they be perfect for mini pumpking pies to share with friendsand famiily during thanksgiving!

  9. My passion is baking and cooking. I’ve been in love with make all kinds of different cake pops ever since I stumbled upon them on your website. Growing up, I was alone a lot, so I thought it was always fun to “invent” something in the kitchen. Then when I started getting older, I started whipping up my tasty snacks for my friends. Everyone has always praised me for my baking and cooking and it the one thing that makes me feel like, well, ME! Lol. It lets me express who I am and my amazing talents :)

    My best baking memory is when I made cookies for the first time from scratch. It was 7 years ago and I was in 7th grade. I wanted to back cookies, but not the kind from the grocery store. I wanted to make ouwie gooie cookies and stick them in tins and give them to my favorite teachers for Christmas. Kiss up much? Hahah. Well, I made homemade chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and peanut butter kiss cookies.

    It may sound like all I did was make some cookies and give them to my teachers, but what made this memory so great to me is that I did it all by myself and they were just as AMAZING as the other treats I’ve made.

    Ever since then I’ve been doing just as much baking as I do cooking.

    I’m addicted, and I hope I win this.

    Love you Bakerella!

  10. My grandma would put all the ingredients for cookies into bowls and us grandkids would stir them all up. We’d sneak a spoonful of dough here and there. It gave us all a great time to visit and yummy cookies when we were done :)

  11. Every Christmas my family makes desserts to give away to friends and family. It is so much fun. Even though we are grown and married, my 2 sisters and i go to our mother’s house every year for a day of baking.

  12. When I was a little girl, my mom would bake several kinds of cookies for Christmas. My favorite were chocolate chip. I would sit at the kitchen table with a nice cold glass of milk in my hand, waiting for the first batch to come out of the oven. There was nothing like that first cookie, still warm from the oven with the chocolate all melty. Pure bliss!

  13. my favorite baking memory is christmas cookies with my family! family cookies :]

  14. I have alot of treasured baking memories. My mom loves to cook and my sisters and I have always joined right it, but one of my favorites was when my mother-in-law taught me to bake some of the treats my husband’s family enjoys. I love her generosity to share the family traditions with me!

  15. My favorite memory: When my son was three years old he heard me get my bowl and mixer out to make cookies and he ran down the hallway to the kitchen and leaped onto his stool while grunting, “ohh ohh ohh” the entire way. Then cried when I explained it would be a while before the cookies were actually made.

  16. When I was 8 nor 9, I cooked my first braised chicken with gravy for our family…the gravy looked so scary, I just new that my brothers would never eat it. I had a brainchild and dyed it red with food coloring thinking it would like like barbecue sauce, NOT, it turned PINK! To this day my meal is known as “Pink Chicken” and is a family favorite!

  17. Watching my Grandma make her grandchildren’s favorite molasses cookies and watching how many cups of flour she used to achieve the recipe instructions which simply said “flour enough to roll.”

  18. The baking memory that holds the closest spot to my heart is with my grandmother. She was my first introduction to baking – making her homemade whole wheat bread! I was about 4, and she would cut off a small lump of dough for me to knead and make my own personal mini-loaf of bread with. I loved mixing, stirring, and even waiting for it to rise was exciting! She still bakes her own bread to this day, and every time I visit her house is filled with aroma of warm bread. It brings me right back to the days of baking it with her!

  19. My best baking memory is and will always be making my first cake (my 17th birthday cake) with my very best friend Natalie! Best day and the laughs we shared (and the sugar) will always be remembered! ={D

  20. My dad and I always baked sugar cookies. He would wait until my mom left the room and always let me taste the batter. :)

  21. Favourite memory is definitely having girlfriends over decorating christmas cookies and catching up!

  22. My favorite baking memorie is of making banana walnut bread in the kitchen with my Mom just sitting and talking to me. I guess I must have been happy, because she said, “You really belong here in the kitchen, you are so in your element.”

  23. My mother always bakes our birthday cakes. I remember the first time she let me help her bake a cake with her. I must have been about 10 and it was such a big deal because she practically let me do it myself. I’ve been baking ever since!

  24. My favorite baking memory is decorating sugar cookies with my childhood best friend after swimming practice when we were 6. My mom would roll out the cookie dough and cut it into different shapes. We would have bowls of different candies and sprinkles and would press them into the cookie dough before we baked it.

  25. My favorite baking memory is: when I first got my kitten Maya she never had any interest in people food, but the first time my wife and I made chocolate chip cookies , she went crazy. We really couldn’t feed her any, but the buttery smell drove her wild.

  26. Last Christmas I had a sugar cookie decorating party with a close circle of friends. One of them had lost a grandchild to SIDS the previous summer and was not feeling too festive. As we all decorated and had a good time we all saw her mood lift. She suddenly commented that this was the best time she had experience that holiday season and was so grateful for all the fun. Guess what – I’m having another one this year. :)

  27. A favourite baking memory of mine is getting up early with some other girls at the small Bible college I attended to make cinnamon rolls for the student body’s breakfast. Afterwards we delivered the leftovers to the married students’ families, living in a little trailer court on campus.

  28. My favorite baking memory was making my husband a Guinness stout cake with whiskey gashne for his birthday. The look on his face when I explained the ingredients had him excited to finally try one of my baked goods. He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth and I finally won him over.

  29. Baking Christmas cookies and decorating the ones my mom use to make with the cookie cutter bells, stars, trees, with the cookies cutters. :)

  30. Making christmas cookies with my Mom and sister… that will forever be in my memory

  31. Last Christmas I had a sugar cookie decorating party with a close circle of friends. One of them had lost a grandchild to SIDS the previous summer and was not feeling too festive. As we all decorated and had a good time we all saw her mood lift. She all of a sudden commented that this was the best time she had experienced that holiday season and was so grateful for all the fun. Guess what – I’m having another one this year. :)

  32. wonderful memories of baking many types of decorated cookies and bringing them to my mom at work, since she always had to work on christmas

  33. My favorite baking memory is definitely making German Christmas cookies (they’re called Plätzchen) with my older sister and my mom when we were little. It was just so much fun to spend the day preparing and kneading the dough, pouring flour all over the table, cutting the cookies with our christmassy cookie cutters, and decorating them with sugar, nuts, and sprinkles. It was just a lovely mother-daughters time and I can’t wait to do the same with my children once I have any ;)

  34. Making my first apple pie at a Girl Scouts’ retreat when I was a kid. We got to take them home, and I remember feeling very proud when had it for dessert after dinner.

  35. While growing up I would help my mom in the kitchen to cook and bake. My mom is an excellent cook, but not so much of a baker, mainly because she couldn’t grasp the concept of presentation when it came to desserts. I’ve always had a love for the arts and crafts, and so one holiday (I was in middle school) I took over making the desserts. That was the first time I ever baked and the last time my mom baked! Lol! No one knew that it had been that made the desserts that year and everyone commented on how much better tasting and especially how much prettier they looked. Finally after everyone was finished eating I told my family that it was actually me that had made the desserts. Since then I have been the one to always make the desserts for any general get togethers, parties, birthdays, and holidays; and I absolutely love it! I’m so thankful for all the great recipes and ideas on here as we’ll to be able to keep up my great reputation with my family and friends! Thank you! :)

  36. Last spring my sister came to visit me in Oklahoma and we made cake pops for her grandson’s school carnival. It was crazy but they looked so great and sold out in a hurry.

  37. When I was a kid my Mom used to bake all the time. We immigrated from the Philippines, so my Mom learned to cook American recipes from magazines. One of my all time favorites was her minature pecan pies (aka pecan tassies). But as my Mom suffered from carpal tunnel due to her work, so she stopped baking. And she had lost the recipe. But I eventually found a delicious recipe online and now I have restarted the tradition – my family always asks for these at holidays!

  38. My favorite baking memory is definitely when I was younger baking with my grandma. She would let me help roll out dough and cut cookies. And whenever she would make bread, after it rose I got to punch it. :)

  39. My favorite baking memory is from when I was around 8. My mom had decided we were doing all the Christmas baking in 1 day. We had puppy chow, sugar cookies, buttermilk cookies and banana nut bread all being made at once by me and her. The kitchen was a mess, and I remember being so proud that I melted the chocolate perfectly without burning it… Something my mom had done earlier in the morning. I don’t know how many times my dad came into the kitchen and just kinda shook his head and walked out.. It was great though. My mom trusted me with my great grandmothers recipes and trusted me to do some of the things on my own. That was the first and last year we would do all the Christmas baking on one day though… The mess afterwards??? “Chores do a body good, Jessica.” Yeah, thanks mom.

  40. When I was very little my mother would let my sister and I lick the batter when she made christmas cookies. She stopped cooking and baking when I was still very young and I have become the family baker but I still remember those early Christmases….and I still prefer batter to the baked stuff.

  41. My favorite memory was always baking apple pies with my mom. My sister and I would always help peeling and slicing the apples and then the real fun would begin: eating the sugar coated apples out of the bowl when my mom turned around. My sister and I both agreed that they were better straight out of the bowl, and my mom always turned a blind eye while we indulged ourselves. Delicious.

  42. My favorite baking memory was baking with my mother :D

  43. I remember my grandmother (who passed away last year at 101) would be more than 50 kinds of cookies, candies, and bars each Christmas. She made up platters for everyone…the local schools, those who couldn’t bake for themselves, the Boy Scouts, churches. And of course we got to nibble on any of it.

  44. I grew up on homemade bread, but it wasn’t until I was in college that this became really special to me. Growing up it was just something my mom did and that made me different. Freshman year of college I realized how much I missed the smell of yeast and the taste of that wholegrain bread, fresh from the oven – and how much I missed my mom’s hands kneading the dough, with little scraps hanging on her wedding ring – how much I missed the little balls of dough my sisters and I always stole after punching it down. I started baking bread in my little dumpy dorm kitchen and giving it to friends. They all still know the type of bread I bake as “Mommy Bread” because that is what I always called it (and still do call it).

  45. My favourite baking memory was probably making chocolate rice kripie cakes with my mum for bake sales :D And she doesn’t know for the life of her how to bake!!!

  46. One of my favorite baking memories was when I started baking at the age of 7. Just seeing my first cake (from a box mix) come out of the oven and being able to taste its wonderful deliciousness was a wonderful experience.

  47. Making “bunny buns” with my daughters, to take to my mom’s for Easter Dinner. We wanted some black bunnies. It was our first time with paste food coloring and didn’t realize just how far a little dab would go.
    The girls have grown and move on with their lives but I still make bunny buns for Easter and we all remember when.

  48. I’ll never forget baking my great-grandmother’s recipe for pumpkin chiffon pie every year with my mom for Thanksgiving. I have a box of gelatin packets in my pantry to this day, all for that once a year pie! I like to make it in a graham cracker crust, while my mom prefers the more traditional butter crust. Homemade whipped cream is a necessity, either way you go!

  49. My favorite baking memory is when I as reunited with my Georgia cousins and baking Apple Cinnamon Bacon Brownies, eating the whole pan, then making them again to share with the rest of our family :)

  50. My favorite baking memory is when i was reunited with my Georgia cousins and baking Apple Cinnamon Bacon Brownies, eating the whole pan and then making it again to share with the rest of our family :)

  51. My mom baked (still does) from the week before Thanksgiving all the way through Christmas, and she brought me into the kitchen with her whenever she could. I remember making these horrible strawberry candies that she oohed and ahhed over while she turned out batches of pecan tassies, gorgeous pies, magazine cover-worthy cakes, and several different kinds of candy (everybody had to have their favorite available!). Still, the holidays, to me, are a time to gather in the kitchen with family and enjoy good food and to make great memories. The smells always take me back…just, not the smell of those nasty candies. :-)

  52. I don’t have any memories of my mom or grandma baking for the holidays, but I have started my own memories with my daughters. Baking for every holiday, BD party or just because they like something. They like to show off their mommy’s cakes or cake pops all the time. I have learned a lot from you Bakerella and other sweet moms who have shared their recipes on the web.

  53. baking has been part of my family. My mother had the most creative birthday, halloween, valentines day, summer cakes for me and my friends. Growing up it was awesome having my classmates asking to spend time in my house to enjoy the bakery and meals my mom would make us. I would like to continue this tradition, and keep bakery in my family

  54. My favorite baking memory is with my little girl’s every Christmas baking cookies and treats for our families is just so special to me.. They love baking like their Mama!

  55. I LOVE that mixer! I would love to make my christmas cookies in that mixer!

  56. My favorite baking memory at the holidays is baking all kinds of different cookies with my mom. Then we would devide them up in seperate packages and me and my brother would take them around to the neighbors on the block. Then they would always bring even different kinds of cookies to our house. It was so much fun to try all the different kinds of cookies people made. I miss that time with my mom and my brother.

  57. My favorite memory is with my sister in law. She passed away last year from a rare form of bone cancer and oh how I miss her. She taught me how to roast a turkey, among many, many other amazing dishes. She was an incredible cook. Everything she touched turned out better than anything else you had ever eaten! I love her so much, and miss her terribly.

  58. Every Thanksgiving my daughters and I bake a new dessert. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes not so much. But we’ve learned to always have ice cream on hand so that a “failed” pie suddenly becomes a great cobbler!

  59. my favorite baking memory is at Christmas time my sister and I bake Christmas cookie wreaths with our Grandma. We use mugs instead of cookie cutters and usually eat all the red hots before the cookies are ready for decorating. Then Grandma tells us funny stories about our Dad from when he was younger, he doesnt always like that :)

  60. Baking thumbprint cookies with my nana and my girls

  61. I remember making my first pate a choux, it was a total disaster … but really fun. :) I was 9 yrs. old.

  62. My favorite baking memory is making cookies with my grandmother when I was little. I didn’t speak arabic very well and she didn’t speak english, but making cookies was something we both had and was very unique to the both of us since none of my cousins liked to bake. I really miss that!

  63. Whenever my Mom made candy at the holidays she would have a cup of cold water ready to test a spoonful of the sugar mixture in to see if it was at soft ball or hard ball stage. i got to eat the test candy as long as one of my siblings didn’t get there first. Such a happy memory of my Mom.

  64. My cute twin sister Ann and I get together each year to make sugar cookies (santas, reindeer, bells, wreaths, snowmen, and any other Christmas item that can be made into a cookie). We have so many that we just keep a few and give the rest away.

  65. I always loved baking cookies with mom when I was little. Now that Iam older, I still loving baking at Christmas with her.

  66. Around 3 or 2 years ago was when my kids and I baked our first chocolate chip cookies from scratch. We had so much fun shopping for the ingredients at the grocery store and baking them together. I still remember when one of my kids insisted on making the cookies to be shaped like cars, so of course we did, and we ended up with adorable car shaped cookies (:

  67. My favorite baking memory was when i was baking french macarons for my high school graduation(: I had so much fun baking them with the help of my amazing friends and i still remember the feel of excitement that we all had while we were waiting for them to pop out of the oven :D

  68. Up until last year, my favorite baking memory was making yeast doughnuts with my grandma when I was about 6. Last year, I made new memories. My two daughters baked holiday cookies with me and we had the best time ever!

  69. my favorite baking memory is when my mom first taught me how to bake homemade chocolate chip cookies. i still use the same recipe she used!

  70. My mom didn’t do a lot of cooking, but she sure loved baking!! Every Christmas I loved helping her make all the delicious holiday treats that we could share with our friends and family. The one thing everyone expected us to make and to see on the table every year was my Grandma Cora’s fudge cake. Its fudgy, nutty goodness, with its browned butter icing is not your typical cake! The recipe makes several cakes (because you can’t make just one!!), and there was always a little batter left in the bowl for us batter lovers (12-egg batter, but we’re all still alive!!) The fudge cake making was always a tradition for all our family get-togethers!

  71. My girlfriends and I spent an entire day baking macarons and cupcakes then devouring them afterwards. It was our first time making macarons so we made a lot of mistakes along the way but it was so much fun laughing at ourselves and catching up on each other’s lives. Good company and good food. :)

  72. After my grandmother passed away, she left my mom a chest full of her old recipes. One of the best recipes was her old-fashioned peanut butter cookies. I remember sneaking into the chest with my sister (we were about 6 years old) and trying to make them for our mom and dad as a surprise. We used melted butter, and baking soda instead of powder. When we didn’t know what an ingredient was, we just skipped it. The cookies turned out awful! But my mom and dad still pretended to love them. The next day we went to the store to the ingredients for another batch, and they showed us how to make them the right way. :)

  73. My favorite baking memory was also with my grandmother. I was a pre-teen at the time, and would spend every weekend at her apartment. I also subscribed to Nickelodeon magazine, and they had a recipe for cookies with green ooze.

    I don’t remember the recipe, but they were surprisingly good.

  74. My favorite baking memory is decorating sugar cookies with my mom, grandma, and sister. It was my great-grandma’s recipe so it just felt right. We had a blast using sprinkles and icing with the cookie as our canvas.

  75. My friends and I always bake together. We love making anything, as long as it was homemade. Around Christmas time and in the summer, we would always make treats and then sell them to neighbors and other friends and family. The profits will go to the animal shelter. We always like to put smiles on the staffs faces so they would know that the animals might be able to survive another night.

  76. My mom is the worst baker ever. If it wasn’t black and very crispy, it wasn’t done yet. Luckily, our neighbor Mrs. G was the best. My sister and I would go to her house every weekend to help her bake wonderful surprises.

  77. Hi!!!
    My Name Is Michelle and I am 13 years old. Now I will always remember my craziest ever baking experience. Me and my two friends were bored at home just after finishing our homework. I couldn’t really think about what to do, and they couldn’t either. We thought and thought for about an hour. Finally I had the idea to cook. So we went to the kitchen and looked at what we had.
    And we found:
    1) Food Coloring 2) Lemon CakeMix 3) Old canning jars
    4) Frosting
    So, guess what we made…………..Rainbow Cake in a Jar!!!
    We looked up photos on the internet and got the idea.
    That day I think we had the messiest kitchen ever, but we finished with these beautiful cakes and they were wonderful (even though we heard extremely loud music)
    Bakerella why dont you make rainbow cake pops that would be awesome!!!!
    Thanks for reading a huge fan!!!!!!!!

  78. Favorite baking memory was actually a disaster in the kitchen.. a perfect birthday cake made for my husband that accidentally slid off the cake plate and into the fridge making a huge mess before we ever blew out the candles. We ate it anyway and still laugh about it to this day.

  79. My favorite baking moments are making monkey bread with my nieces. The 1st time we made it they were 6 & 4, now they’re 13 & 11 and still love baking with their favoite aunt.

  80. I have a large family on my Dad’s side and we always spent Thanksgiving together. Once I became a teenager I would help Grandma plan the menu and determine what everyone was bringing. I would spend the night and she would teach me how to make everything. Eventually I became in charge of all the deserts. She passed suddenly from this world when I was in high school, but I will always remember our times together baking.

  81. My favorite memory is my mom (who has been gone for 10+ years ) making a castle cake for my birthday. She wasn’t much of a baker but she always liked to experiment with cakes. The castle cake was a huge favorite, followed by a rainbow cake (angel food with jello poured into poked holes), followed by the every popular Kahlua cake! Thanks for bringing back those memories!

  82. My favorite baking memory is picking blackberries that grew wild across the street growing up and baking pies and tarts with them every summer. :)

  83. My favorite baking memory is doing Christmas baking with my mom. Every year, I would gather my supplies and head to her house and we would have a marathon day baking together. Christmas music playing in the background, womderful smells in the house and lots of laughter. I would love to have one more day like that with her…miss her!

  84. Any time I spent baking with my two sisters and mom when I was little was so fun…we still have fun in the kitchen, just not quite as often.

  85. My favorite baking memory is with my grandmother. She is 88, and an amazing baker. Each holiday season, we make fried apricot pies together to give away. It has been our tradition for the last 10 years!

  86. My favorite baking memories are the new ones I am making with my 5 year old son. He as been my sidekick in the kitchen for a few years now and loves, loves, loves to get his bake on :) I especially love hearing him exclaim while play cooking in his little kitchen, “I need a 1/4 cup of sugar,…….” Sweet times with my little guy!!

  87. Every other Thanksgiving or Christmas, my grandma would arrive with a huge box of all of her favorite Christmas candies made just for us kids. We would eagerly await her arrival, and dive into the box almost as soon as she walked through the door. My favorites were her walnut divinity and chocolate nut fudge. Oh…the memories are making me salivate!

  88. My childhood best friend and I used to bake cut-out sugar cookies every year during the holidays. It was messy, we used a ridiculous amount of sprinkles, but every year we loved it. After I moved away, I still try to bake and send her the same kind of christmas cookies every year, and I still use some of the same cookie cutters- 20 years after we started!

  89. My favorite baking memory involves having a group of friends come over and help decorate cookies dedicated for the Airmen cookie drive. This annual event on Air Force bases worldwide (or at least all the bases we’ve been stationed at so far, here and abroad) involves distributing a dozen handmade cookies to each airman living on base at the holidays.

  90. I use to make pecan pies for thanksgiving. I might have to do it again.

  91. Mine is pretty recent: this summer I baked a wedding cake, and cupcakes, and mini cupcakes, for a couple of very very dear friends! It was a roller coaster ride: fun baking, ups and downs in frosting (the consistency wasn’t perfect), fun decorating, a white-knuckled drive to the winery with the cakes in the back of my car, and then total delight and all worth it when the bride and groom saw the cake and couldn’t believe how well it all turned out.

  92. My daughter and I love to bake together and Mae cake pops for all occasions
    Memories in the making
    Thanks for the chance

  93. My Mom also makes a fantastic Pecan Pie. Love your website and your beautiful cake pop designs.

  94. Baking holiday cookies with my mom and grandma. We always had a great time rolling out dough and cutting them out. Loved this growing up! And now doing this with my own girls! Thanks!

  95. My favorite baking memory is from a Thanksgiving. While I was in college, my older sister and her family lived about 3 hours away. This was much closer than my mom and dad so I went to spend Thanksgiving with her. She and I were making the pecan pie, and she asked me to put the butter in the microwave to melt to pour in the pie filling. I did. The pies turned out fabulous, even though the next morning we found the butter in the microwave! We laughed so hard, but no one knew it was missing.

  96. Of course I grew up baking with my mom and always loved making cookies, cakes, pies… However, some of my favorite baking memories are with my dad! When I was little I had a series of Sesame Street books and in each book was a section by the Cookie Monster and recipes for different cookies. My favorite were his “surprise cookies”! It was a basic round sugar-type cookie that you put surprise fillinings in – one round on the bottom, your filling, and top with another round, pinch the edges and voila! We had so much fun finding all kinds of things to hide in the centers. It was great experimenting with what worked and what didn’t – like a little science project, plus I got to spend quality time baking with Dad – two of my favorite things when I was little!

  97. My favorite baking memory is baking sugar cookies at my grandma’s house. Then she would set out all the decorations and frosting to have a decorating party with my cousins. We ate more than we decorated at the table and it was always so much fun. I can’t wait to do this with my 2 year old daughter!

  98. Love holiday baking with the girls I grew up with. Now that we’re all grown up and have kids and lives and blah blah blah…we get together and make pies and cookies and have wine and giggles every year. It’s wonderful!

  99. I love to bake!! I am always baking cookies, cupcakes and cake pops to share with my friends, neighbors and coworkers. My husband is retired Air Force and every year my children would help me make and hand decorate hundreds and hundreds of sugar cookie my hushband took to the single Airmen from his detachment. Now I love Holiday baking with my grandson and can’t wait this year my grandaughter will be old enough to help!!! Or at least as much help as a 21 month old can, :) Sugar, flour, sprinkles oh my!!

  100. My first and fondest memories of baking are of using an Easy Bake Oven with my best friend, Lauren.

  101. Eating coffee cake on christmas morning with my brothers while opening our stocking gifts. We still do it now with our kids too.

  102. I can’t narrow it down to just one – but they all involve baking with my kids. I hope that this wonderful memory for ME is also a happy memory for them! xoxo

  103. My mom is one that didn’t like kids hanging out in the kitchen while she cooked. So, whenever she let us come in and help it was a treat. Now that I have a 8yr. Old daughter that loves to cook, I try to make it fun and special. Those times in the kitchen are most memorable!!! We laugh, she open up about life, and just have a great time together! We are on a girls retreat as I write and she and I are going to try cake pops for the first time! Yay!!!

  104. The annual baking of holiday goodies each winter while growing up with my sisters, Becky and Jessie! We laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed the whole time! What I would give to go back in time to when we all lived together with Mom and Dad and our cat Inky.

  105. As a newlywed many years ago I remember trying a variety of recipes. One day I decided to make gingerbread cookies with help from my MIL and when I say one day it really took the WHOLE day. We had so much fun not only baking them but decorating them as well! Never made them again but it was the beginning of many baking adventures.

  106. My mother, who never got along with yeast, made cinnamon rolls every Christmas. Sometimes they were a little tough but always delicious. Now it’s my tradition-it’s not Christmas without them!

  107. My grandmother was “famous” in our family for her fresh apple cake. She would bake one every time we traveled to visit and we knew one would be waiting when we arrived. My favorite memory is of her showing me how she made the cake and sharing her tips for making it just the way she did.

  108. Baking my daughter’s first birthday cake (her birthday is today). I have always been a good baker, but it was the first cake that I attempted to decorate with gumpaste figures and make cute. Thankfully, it turned out adorable – can’t wait for the party this afternoon!

  109. I loved baking with my mom, granny, and grandma as a girl. Now that I’m a mom I love baking with my own children. My favorite is at Christmas when we bake and decorate sugar cookies for Santa!

  110. Making raspberry jam-filled cookies called Ischl Tarts, first with my mom, then with my husband, and now with our two kids. Family members steal them off the cookie plate and guard the tin that’s given to them as it was filled with gold!

  111. I am currently a college student, and I have a friend at school that I love to bake with. One Friday night, we baked cookie bars in our dorm’s kitchen, then ate them while watching a movie. It’s always so much fun!

  112. My favourite baking memorie is from last christmas when me, my dad, sister and cousin each made a gingerbreadhouse. I didn’t really had my hopes up because i thought it would be so hard, but it turned out GREAT! So then we made a town with the four buildings and the christmas spirit was all around the house. I hope we will do it this year again, I’m already planning ahead :-) love your blog!

  113. Gingerbread cookies every year with my kiddos! The kitchen is filled with laughter and delicious smells! :)

  114. Every year my mom and I would bake chocolate chip cookies and thumbprint cookies. I was never a fan of thumbprint cookies but it didn’t matter, all that mattered was spending quality time with my mom. Now that I’m older, I can’t wait to carry on this tradition with my kids.

  115. Last Christmas I baked Libby’s Pumpkin Roll. Everybody loved it so much, I almost didn’t get a piece to try ;)
    I can not wait to make it again this Thanksgiving and Christmas ;)

  116. My favorite baking memory is when my daughter pulled a chair up by the side of the counter and asked if she could dump this or that into the bowl as we made some bread. She also loved rolling it out with the rolling pin and sprinkling it with cinnamon sugar.

  117. Oh my…on my to bake list for sure! Thank you for sharing. Can’t wait to make a few of these for the holiday season and love the mini ones all prettied up!
    My fave baking memory is making cinn rolls with my Mom…it’s been ages since we’ve done that as I haven’t had much luck making it home for the holiday season.
    What a fabulous give away! THANK YOU! :)

  118. My favorite baking moment is making cinnamon rolls with my family. We make them from scratch for all the big holidays but it’s been three years since I’ve had them. I moved away three years ago and I miss the cinnamon rolls almosr as much as I miss my family :0)

  119. Baking my great-grandma’s cinnamon rolls in her kitchen when I was in elementary school.

  120. When I married my husband I became indoctrinated into my mother-in-law’s holiday baking traditions. Each holiday she, along with all her daughters, bake and bake and bake–pies, appetizers, desserts of all kinds. I didn’t grow up in a home with a lot of cooking so I wouldn’t call myself an asset to the holiday baking activities. However, I was immediately welcomed with open arms and immersed into a family tradition as if I had always been a daughter. I’ll never be able to thank my in-laws enough.

  121. My mother was full blooded Irish and at Christmas time there was a massive amount of baking. We loved pulled toffee and I loved her Irish Rasberry Shortbread Cookies.

  122. My favorite memory is giving my Dad his KitchenAid mixer for Christmas before he made his famous rolls. It made the process so much easier for him. He cried.

    My memory is even more precious since he was killed 9 months after that Christmas.

  123. I am 18 my mother is a single mother and when i was little my grandmother pretty much raised me . Baking was what i call fun . Every chance my grandmother and I got we baked . We always had fun even after her hand mixer got out of controll splattered us with cookie dough ( haha ) . My grandmother ‘s Baking made me passionate about baking and in my near future i hope i will be going to Le Cordon Bleu to be a Pastry Chef. But with out the holiday baking and well daily baking with my grandma i really wouldnt be who i am . i always dreamed if good mixers . im used to me and my ya-ya ( grandma in geek ) using our hands :)

  124. My favorite baking memories are the ones I am currently creating with my niece. She loves sweets as much as I do and its so much share my baking world with her.

  125. When I was younger, my mom always baked cakes, cookies, and brownies. Every time she baked, I would be with her, watching her, helping her, and learning from her. Every time she bakes was a wonderful memory for me because she was the reason why I got into baking!

  126. I got to be in the pillsbury bake off in 2010 – that was a pretty great time… “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines…”
    I love baking with my kiddos, the two year old is an excellent egg crusher- I mean crack-er… ;)

  127. I was always my mom’s helper with her baking – I remember making the classic Bon Appetit chocolate ribbon cake with her, and being so excited to make ribbon out of chocolate!

  128. My favorite baking memory was watching my grandma bake in the kitchen my mom grew up in. She made the best strawberry shortcake. I miss her!

  129. Making Chrristmas cookie boxes with my mom and daughter to give to family and friends.

  130. It’s too hard for me to pick an all-time favorite baking memory but one of my fondest is making “busy day cake” with my mom. She usually relied on box mixes so making a cake from scratch was super exciting for me :)

  131. I remember when I was 9 I learned how to make eggs.
    It was the first thing I ever made. I would get the eggs all over the counters. When I got the eggs in the bowl I would go as fast as I can but it got all over the place. I tried to go fast and try to make it look cool like my mom did but it didn’t turn out that way. In the end I got only a very small amount of eggs. I enjoy that day even today. I will always remember that day for the rest of my life :)

  132. my favorite baking memory happens everyday, because my daughter is constantly baking treats so i always get to enjoy them

  133. My most meaningful baking memory is using that of my mom teaching me haw to make biscuits with her grandmother’s biscuit cutter: an old sweetened condensed milk can. Dispute the fact that it has been thrown in the trash by several visiting “helpers” the can is invaluable to my mother and to me.

  134. My favorite bakings memories (many more than just one) are of baking my kids’ birthday cakes. Every year I try to make their cake better than the year before. So far, I’ve always gotten rave reviews from the kids…in fact they always tell me that “this” cake is the best one EVER!!! There’s nothing like making someone else happy with my baking! :)

  135. Whenever there is a wedding in the family, my mom and her sisters all get together to create desserts leading up to the big day. A few years ago I was invited to join in their baking extravaganza and it’s become better with each passing year! Now that I’m at college I don’t get to bake the way I used to, but with every visit home I know there will be a special time carved out for fun in the kitchen.

  136. My mom was not much of a cook or baker, but every Thanksgiving and Christmas she would get our her stash of cookie cutters and make sugar cookies that my sister and I decorated. We never had frosting…instead we used colored sugar, little silver balls, sprinkles, all kinds of fun decor stuff. We loved it! Looking back, I can only imagine the mess we made, but mom never complained!

  137. My grandmother baked Christmas treats beginning at Thanksgiving until Christmas every year. My mom decorated our house so that everything was done by Thanksgiving. I have the warmest memories of eating Turkey while little twinkle lights shimmered throughout the house. As Christmas got closer, my grandmother would bake dozens of cut out cookies in the shape of Santa, reindeer, bells, and trees. She’d mix up batches of red, green, and white icing, and put out little bowls of sprinkles and tiny candies. Then my whole family would sit at the big kitchen table and decorate all the cookies. Those times were special and I cherish them so much!

  138. I remember my grandmother teaching me how to cook and bake as a child…I loved going to her home for my baking lessons…I have paid it forward teaching my son to cook…my daughters could care less. ;-)

  139. My most favorite baking memory is learning to make Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies with my mom, starting when I was 3 years old. She would let me do the simple tasks like spooning flour in to the measuring cup or pouring in the chocolate chips. We would always say each step as we completed it because we often pretended that we were on our own cooking show. Our kitchen window was the pretend camera filming us. I still have that cookie recipe memorized and I’m now a college student.

  140. My favorite baking memory is with my mother during Thanksgiving. Every year she bakes and give away about 20 sweet potato pies. Each year I’m learning more from her as I help her bake the pies. What I cherish the most is not only is she teaching how to bake the sweet potato pies so she can stop but all the wonderful memories we share about her mother. This is the person who taught her so much about giving to others less fortunate.

  141. Baking with my boyfriend is always fun. The first time we made cake pops and he noticed how ocd I am about following directions. I follow them to the pin point. I need perfection each time it’s a girl thing I tell him. So when it takes us 2 hours to bake and decorate and the pops look amazing he notices how happy a perfect treat makes me happy. And it’s priceless when my little nephews and nieces look at the pop and devour it in seconds :o)

  142. I began baking as a toddler and my go-to item were cupcakes!

  143. My grandmother would Make home made Zepoli and honey balls for Christmas, and we all would be in the kitchen watching her mix up the dough for the Zepoli then deep free them she would put powdered sugar in a brown paper bag and put them in the bag and shake it, then she would roll the dough into a thin rope and slice them and deep free them and mix up the honey mixture with sprinkles and pour over the sliced balls, we would sneak some when she turned her back.

  144. My favorite baking memory just happened recently. My 3 year old and I decided to make cookies one day. He loves watching me make my decorated cookies and this day he chose to make chocolate “chips” cookies. We had a great time and he still talks about them almost every day.

  145. I have so many wonderful baking memories. One stand out is when as a newlywed my mother in law came to visit and she taught me how to make her amazing caramel nut rolls. We had flour, sugar, nuts, bowls and pans spread out all over my little kitchen! It was a wonderful bonding experience and I’m grateful that my hubby caught it all on camera!

  146. My grandmother made a dessert called Charlotte Russe every Christmas and only for Christmas. All of her grandchildren would all wait for the end of dinner for her to bring out the grand finale, beautifully presented in a trifle bowl. I asked her many times for the recipe but she never followed one and I’ve never been able to find a recipe that tasted as good.

  147. My mom used to decorate beautiful cakes and I used to eat the extra frosting — the best part!

  148. I love to bake! I tried your peanut butter brownies last wek and just about died! So did y husband!

  149. My favorite baking memory was as a child at Christmas time with my grandma. She had a simple butter cookie recipe that she called “sand tarts” and we would roll out the dough, cut them into shapes and sprinkle them with candy goodness. I loved baking with her and I’ve tried to pass this tradition down to my 2 little girls each holiday season!

  150. Baking Christmas cookies with my mom and sisters. After we were all married we realized that we missed that time and made a Christmas cookie day where we would all meet up and making our favorite cookies together. It wouldn’t be Christmas with out chocolate filled thumbprint cookies and powdered sugar all over the floor from making these cookies.

  151. Ever since I was a little girl my mom and I used to always bake and cook together. During the holidays we would experiment with tons of recipes to find a few keepers for the years to come. There would be days where we would literally bake 5-6 different types of cookies or desserts. My mom passed away several years ago, but since then every year around the holidays I do what we always did together. It has become a way to help keep her memories and the tradition alive.

    By the way, I made these bad boys today – so so so good! :)

  152. My family bakes christmas cookies for two full days while listening to christmas carols. It’s fun baking, hanging out and singing with family every year while making some traditional family recipes.

  153. My favorite baking memory is baking chocolate cookies with my grandma. The best ever!!

  154. My favorite memeory is helping my mom make cookies for Christmas

  155. My favorite baking moment was with my twin cousins which I babysat till they were 4 yrs old. They were only 3 yrs old and they wanted to bake a cake for their mom on Mother’s Day. They each had a 4in cake which they decorated on their own . When mom came home the girls surprised their mom with the perfect mother day gift a cake…

  156. Every Christmas we would make fudge with my dad. It was always the best fudge, but I love to think back to those days and remember how he always used to yell and get excited when it came time to the “critical stage.” You really had to be on your toes with him. It was that way when I was 8 and still the same when I’m 40. Despite the yelling, it was a great bonding experience.

  157. Hands down, my fav is making pecan pies with MY mom! She’d totally get upset with me when I’d start to pick the pecans off the top of the pies when they were set out to cool. Can exactly give the pie away as a gift when it’s missing tons of pecans!

  158. My favorite baking memories also involve my grandmother. We used to bake dozens and dozens of cookies and challah at Christmas and hanaukkah. Every year she would find new and exciting cookies to make. Some were great, like chocolate chocolate chip oatmeal or jam thumb prints. Some not so great like anise or ketchup cookies. She is the reason I bake.

  159. Christmas baking with my mother! My, did she have more patience during that time that I ever have. I was a notorious licker of bowls and utensils, and a finger poker in cakes and other yummy items….She made some incredible baked goods – and I am blessed to know how to make some of them now. Hopefully she can come visit and teach me some more!

  160. When I was little, we had just moved to a new state and my mom was working late on Christmas Eve and didn’t know when the grocery store closed. She got there too late to pick up breakfast supplies for Christmas morning. So my sister and I got to pick what we ate for breakfast out of the fridge, and we chose jello and cookie dough! It became a tradition in my family, and whatever cookie dough we didn’t eat for breakfast we’d bake into cookies later in the day. Now that we’re grown up we no longer have cookie dough on Christmas morning but we still bake cookies, popovers, and belgian waffles every Christmas.

  161. My favorite baking memory is baking with my grandmother when I was little. My favorite treat was “Black Bottoms;” basically chocolate and cream cheese mini cupcakes, which were the perfect size for me. She would show me how to put together and mix all the ingredients and then let me scoop little bits of batter into her tins. She gave me those tins and I’m going to keep them forever and pass those memories to my children and grandchildren one day.

  162. My favorite baking memory is from baking my grandma’s favorite vanilla cupcakes with her.

  163. Every year my mom and grandma would get together and prepare Thanksgiving dinner.the night before.
    Since I was the only girl, I always got to help and I loved it.

  164. I have too many. I love baking and cooking! But the first time I made cookies with my son… that would be the best baking memory for me.

  165. I used to bake with my grandma… every time i visited her, we’d make something. My favorites were haystack candies, oatmeal cookies and her pies! She made the BEST pie!! Rhubarb pie was her specialty. i learned to bake right by her side.

  166. My favorite baking memory is when i was about 13, my sister and i were making snickerdoodles. We were so excited it was our first time to bake alone. After we took them out of the oven we took a bite and to our surprise they didn’t taste like Snickers at all. We just couldn’t understand even though we added no Snicker ingredients. Its something we still laugh about today!!

  167. My favorite baking recipe can’t really be narrowed down to just one event, but it’s a combination of many Christmas cookie baking memories with my Mom. We have a running competition with ourselves to see how many different kinds of cookies we can make in the weeks leading up to Christmas(I think our record is 23 or 24). Then for all of the Christmas season we make a big platter of assorted cookies to take to family and friends whenever we go to their houses for dinner.

  168. My mother baked a lot and I remember being in the kitchen with her. She passed away and now my sisters and I remember her through her recipes. Some that remind us of her is her Rotten Banana Cake (or bread) and her Pumpkin Muffins. I thoroughly enjoy baking and since finding your blog, have made many more recipes (all fantastic too)!

  169. I remember baking date-nut cookies with my mom when I was very young. I still make the cookies every year, and the smell of the filling simmering always brings back memories.

  170. My favorite memory was watching my mom make strands of bread stuffed with who knows what, and then braiding those strands together to make a beautiful loaf of bread!

  171. I used to bake christmas cookies with my grandmother every year. The candy cane cookies were our favorite, and we always made a large batch to wrap up and give as gifts!

  172. My favorite holiday baking memory? Well I am the baker in the family, so I initiate most of the memories lol. But when I was a kid, my aunt would make cookies with us during Christmas break. We would cut out sugar cookies and put them to bake. And then dip the raw dough scraps in sanding sugar for a pre-snack snack. She was a horribly awesome influence lol :)

  173. Making Christmas cookies with my mom and sisters. We have a ton of cookie cutters and my mom would roll out the dough and let us go nuts cutting and decorating. I will remember how fun sprinkles are and to dust the cutters in flour for ease.

  174. One of my favorite baking memories was actually when I tried making cake pops for the first time! And can you believe my first cake pops were the Hello Kitty pops?? Since then, I have been hooked and make cake pops for birthdays and various occasions and people love them! Thank you for all your inspiration Bakerella!

  175. Baking is my comfort. I remember watching my mom bake christmas cookies and the most delicious birthday pies, it struck me the time and care she took, I have translated that care into a comfort for me. Whenever I am stressed or having a bad week, I take time to bake– whether it be something I’ve made a hundred times or something new and delicious that I want to explore.

  176. Best baking memory is the first time I made cake pops, brought them to a party, and they were a HIT! All thanks to Bakerella and her magical creations. :)

  177. I used to bake with my mom all the time, especially at Christmas time. We baked around 20 kinds of German cookies and also Linzer Torte every year. It was a lot of work, but people eagerly awaited their tins of cookies from my Mom each Christmas.

  178. My favorite memory is baking Christmas cookies with my Mother and sisters. The dining room table would be covered with iced cookies and so would all the side tables. We always used a cookie recipe called “Form Cookies” and always used 7 minute royal icing. These days, I use buttercream icing-homemade of course!

  179. Every Christmas, my sister, mother, and I would make Russian Tea Cakes. However, we call them “Killer Cookies” beccause people who are not used to eating powder sugar coated cookies, inhale when eating and nearly choke.

  180. My favorite baking memory was decorating sugar cookies for Christmas with my brothers and sisters and older cousin. My cousin passed away 5 years ago, but I’ll always cherish those memories.

  181. My favorite memory is baking Christmas cookies with my Mother and sisters. The dining room table would be covered with iced cookies and so would all the side tables. We always used a cookie recipe called “Form Cookies” and always used 7 minute royal icing. These days, I use buttercream icing-homemade of course!

  182. My favorite baking memory involves pecan pie, too! I grew up in a neighborhood full of pecan trees and have fond memories of collecting them with my grandparents. Pecan pie was the first thing I learned to bake.

  183. I’ll never forget baking chocolate waffle iron cookies with my grandma. We made a disaster out of her tiny kitchen and laughed and giggled all day while we made those cookies. I don’t even remember if the cookies were any good – but the memory, well that’s the most delicious thing ever.

  184. I love to make gingerbread cookies at Christmas. I get lots of decorations and when my (grown) kids assemble Christmas Eve, everyone decorates a few. They last through New Years. I am hoping it will be a special memory of theirs for years to come.

  185. My family spent many summers at a small lake community in Manitoba, and there is the cutest, most delicious bakery there. Our favorite cookie was their Baby Sallies, two shortbread cookies with raspberry jam in the middle, and a light lemon glaze on top. A few years ago I was going through my mother’s recipes, and I found a brown piece of paper with immaculate handwriting, and the recipe for these beloved cookies. My mother went on to explain that a friend of hers from high school had written out the recipe for her on a piece of their brown paper towels 40 years ago. I thought it was such a nice story, and I often bake these cookies and send them to members of my family.

  186. My grandmother would make a batch of cookies every day when I visited during the summer. It’s a miracle I didn’t gain weight for those few June weeks every year! She taught me how to bake, and every year I would help her make perfect cookies for the county fair. To this day, every time I bake I think of my time with her.

  187. My favorite baking memory has been made more recently while baking with my two children every holiday season and passing along the recipes I learned from my mother and grandmothers. Its so much fun to see them learn to measure ingredients and later eat the finished product!

  188. My favorite baking memory was when I was in my kitchen with my grandchilden this summer baking strawberry rhubarb pie. mmm!

  189. WOW! I love these, can’t wait to make them for halloween or Christmas presents! They’re so cute!

  190. Christmas cookies are always my best baking memories. I was pretty impressed with myself the year I made ‘stained glass’ cookies with crushed life savers!

  191. Cookies…lemon cookies, butter cookies, sugar cookies and of course ginger molasses cookies….YUM!

  192. My favorite baking memory would have to be waking up early to bake biscuits with my grandfather. I’d tiptoe downstairs before everyone else in the house was awake, and he’d let me help. I’d always get the privilege of getting the biscuit that was made from the leftover scraps.

  193. I loved making my Aunt Margaret’s white fruitcake recipe with pecans (pee-cons), and candied cherries and pineapple. It was so good that we never had a single slice wasted.

  194. My favorite baking memory was baking apple pies with my grandmother when I was little. In my eyes, my grandmother is the BEST baker I have ever met and I always ask her for her recipes. Now that I am older, I recently made her some lemon crinkle cookies, which she absolutely loved and asked me for the recipe. I was truly honored!

  195. I grew up with my Dad, who raised my brother and I alone as a single-father. We didn’t have an amazingly close relationship and it was strained in many ways. But I remember getting our christmas cookie cook book out every year and making plans and baking lots of cookies together. I still call him for the recipes and he’s my go-to source for all food/recipe questions.

  196. My favorite baking memories are always with my mom baking Christmas cookies. We kids would hover around hoping for a turn to lick out the bowl and waiting for a batch of “duds” to come out for us to snack on.

  197. I remember the first time I “baked” with my daughter, she was about 18 months and kept eating the cookie batter. While it was cute, it was frustrating but we made it through. To this day we love baking together! Thanks for the giveaway!

  198. I would like to know, will it be a choice of color, or the shiny one in the photo.

  199. I’d have to say that my favorite baking memory would be growing up, my grandmother & I would always experiment with cupcakes & pies. We would attempt new flavor creations, which more often than not turned out alright, but others were complete failures. Either way, we always laughed & enjoyed the time together. She’s gone now, but I always feel her in the kitchen with me when I’m feeling adventurous.

  200. My favorite baking memory has to be the first time I made a yeast bread (cinnamon raisin, to be exact). I just felt such a sense of accomplishment – and it was absolutely delish!

Leave a Comment »