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.
___________________________________________________________________
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.
___________________________________________________________________
This post is sponsored by Nestlé® Toll House® Morsels, the perfect special ingredient for all of your family’s favorite treats!
My favorite baking memory is when me & my best friend stayed up all night baking Christmas cookies. The one batch didn’t come out so well & we forgot the name of the cookie so we ended up calling them “Surprises”! We plan on getting together this year with a bottle of wine & repeating the process again!! Gotta love holiday baking:) Thanks for the giveaway opportunity!
I am introducing my 4-year old daughter, Evie, to the joys of baking. (I wish I could say that baking is a passion that was passed down to me from my mum, however, she would be the first to admit that she is not a domestic godess when it comes to baking!) Evie is currently enjoying learning how to measure the ingredients, lick the spoon, and of course help decorate the cookies, cupcakes, and our favorite Bakerella cake pops! I look forward to spending many more years sharing my passion with her and to one day learning something new from her!
Baking with my grandma when I was little–I have some fond memories of her sighing over me sneaking bites of raw cookie dough. I still think about her every time I make her chocolate oatmeal cookies.
One of my best baking memories is baking your pears in puff pastry December of 2010 with my boyfriend. I have been wanting a Kitchen Aid Mixer for years! This isn’t the first kitchen aid giveaway I’ve entered. <3
Making hot choc with my dad
My favorite memory has to be from my childhood when my sister and I would make chocolate chip cookies while pretending that we were being filmed for a cooking show. Such fun!!
My favorite baking memory is from a few years ago. I found my grandmothers recipe or gingerbread cookies. We had no had them in many years since she passed in 1993. I have been making them every year since findin the recipe. I know it means a lot to my Dad and hope it brings back many memories for him while creating new ones at the same time.
My favorite baking memory is baking christmas cookies with my mom while watching christmas movies in the kitchen on the tiny tv… we always had so much fun!
my mother used to make 4 o’clocks every holiday. I have tried to replicate them many times but they have never tasted the same.
I’ll never forget the stained glass cookies my grandmother made. she spent so much time melting different colored sugar for them!
I once made horrible sweet potato peanut butter cookies that turned out to be a disaster!
Baking meat pies for both my sons birthdays. I would make the pastry then use alphabet cutters and put Happy Birthday on the pie!
All my children made Jam Tarts with the left over pastry.
I am English and its something my mother used to do also.
They are now in their 20’s and still they request a meat pie when they come home for their birthdays. I make the crust and then still put Happy Birthday and their name and yes they still love it!
My favorite baking memory is my sister and I making christmas cookies for a friends christmas party. We made dozens and dozens of cookies. It was a special time and one of my fondest memories.
My favorite baking moment this month comes from my son who is 4 and the most adorable non-pop creature on this earth!
I always let both of my kids join in the fun when I am baking and my boy loves to “lick the beaters” and bowl. I just finished some brownie Frankenstein Pops when he asked me if he could melt them back and put them on my grandmother’s beaters because they tast better on them. 2 hours of baking wasted??? No, he said mine did look pretty.
Every time i bake its my favorite experience, for i just love the smell and look of a moist chocolate cake coming out of the oven ! But most of all i ( along with my family!) love to eat the cake with some fluffy swiss meringue buttercream covering it!!
One time I was making chocolate chip cookies when my grandparents were over and i accidentally grabbed the corn meal bag instead of the flour bag. I continued the recipe, not knowing my error, and the cookies turned out HORRIBLE!! It was so embarrassing!! Thankfully, my grandfather being the person he is, told me that they were “mighty good”. I know he probably didn’t really think that but it made me feel so much better!! And there’s my story!!:)
Loved making cookies at Xmas with mom
My favorite memory of the kitchen is making cinnamon bread as a kid!
My favorite baking memory was watching my grandmother make her biscuits (which would involve her secret stash of Canadian flour that she kept at the back of the coat closet because she didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on it!)
My favorite memory so far is baking my wedding pies with my mom. My husband and I got married last October, and instead of cake we had an entire dessert table filled with home made cookies, breads and pies. My mom came out early to help with everything, and spending a day in the kitchen with her baking delicious treats for my upcoming wedding was a great day for us. She means so much to me, and I’m so happy that we got to share that memory together.
My favorite baking memory was when my grandmother taught me how to make homemade brownies. It was around Thanksgiving and I asked her to teach me how to cook as good as she did. At that time I didn’t have a clue on baking or cooking. She treated cooking and baking like it was a form of art. She made pretty much everything from scratch and anything chocolate was her specialty.The brownies turned out so moist and chewy. I will never forget that special day that I learned how to bake!
Learning the family Italian cookie recipes with Mom & Nonna.
My favorite baking memory is of a German Chocolate cake. I was browsing through a magazine one day and my husband happen to He asked if I knew how to make one. I said yes but only from scratch I don’t do box cakes. He said it was in his words “Very mosst favorite cake in the whole wide world!!” I said I would make him one. Long story short, I made the cake on a Friday night. By Sunday evening it was gone. Needless to say I did not get one slice. Now when he tells me he really likes something I always take him at his word so I will be able to have some too!! :)
My best memory of baking was my first whole chicken for my family. Was so amazing that my husband almost ate it completely. Besides that he loves the oatmeal cookies that I make.
Btw, I was visiting the US and I went to this William-Sonoma store just to meet it because you keep on mention it.
Thank you!
When my daughter was in Kindegarten, we made and baked Christmas cookies in the teachers lounge for the kids to take home. They wore little Chef Hats and were so excited to be “baking”. I hope they still have that great attitude toward baking!
Baking different kinds of cookies with my kids who are still in grade school. I just love their oohs and aahs when cookies come out of the oven.
My favorite baking memory is baking peanut butter cookies with my Grandfather as a young child. When he taught me how to make a little design on the top using a fork, I was so impressed!
Every year my Mother, Grandmother, cousins and four nieces have our annual Christmas cookie production. Each of us would take on a different cookie recipe: snickerdoodles, sugar cookie cut outs, magic bars, shortbread cookies, rum balls, gingerbread men etc…it is always a great time to share cooking tips and tricks and funny family stories. It is something I look forward to sharing with my future children :)
I absolutely love making the cake pops with my daughter. She wants to follow in my foot steps and I have never been so happy! I love to bake right In my own home! Learning how to make fondant was really exciting and a very fun experience. I wish I could open up my own shop but in this little town of Goose Creek not very many people want cakes and pastries when there is a publix right next door. Anybody who loves to bake good for you! It is a good way to take the stress off of you!
Baking is one of my favorite stress relievers. I grew up with a spatula in my hand – crafting cookies, pies, cakes, and other yummy treats. There are so many fun memories through the years. A most recent favorite was an evening of cake decorating with my little great niece and nephew. It was their great grandma’s birthday and oh the FUN they had as I lead their little hands through the gooey beauty of frosting and cake. Five and three, they were so proud to present their work to their “Gigi”.
When I was small, my family would make hard candy once a year…different colors and different flavors…I loved it. It may be why I turned to science as a career! It’s not quite baking, but working with a candy thermometer was exciting!
My best baking memory were the late nights during the holidays baking with my aunt. we baked everything from italian cookies, to pecan pies, and everything in between. The hours of baking in the kitchen built a relationship with her that is unbreakable. She became not only my baking confidant, but my best friend. Not to mention, we gained a little bit of extra weight together. My love for cooking, and baking especially grew from her!
I have very fond memories of baking cookies for Christmas with my mother. We always make butter, sugar, chocolate chip, chocolate chip pecan and Mexican wedding cookies. The memory is so strong I can almost smell them right now. What a great giveaway!
Every Christmas my mom bakes tons of different Christmas cookie All Tasty
Nothing smells better than something baking in the oven!! I love to bake anything.
a few years ago a good friend of mine had a group of girls over after a fun day of apple picking to bake what we had just reeped. apple pie & apple crisps galore. i honestly felt like that day had taken place in another point in time- all women, in the kitchen, making a mess, laughing, gossiping, snacking while we baked. i wish we could do that more often.
Our kids loved brownies and I used “the Big Bad Wolf ‘s Brownies” recipe from Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Cookbook.They thought it was pretty cool to have the same brownies as that bad wolf.
My mom and I always make time to get together to make Christmas cookies every season. We have our tried and true favorites but we try to incorporate new recipes and see if they make it to next years favorite bunch. Every year we bake more and more tasty treats! Although that is a good baking memory… I also love baking with my mom on Easter. Even though I’ve become quite an experienced cake decorator over the past few years… we break out the duncan hines and make a box cake. We cut out bunny ears & a bow from a round cake layer & add it to the round “bunny face” layer. We have so much fun using colored coconut, jelly beans & twizzlers making a cute bunny face! No matter how old we get, it’s tradition!
I loved baking monster cookies with my mom as a child. We’d get out the turkey roasting pan and start adding goodies until it was close to overflowing. My mom would carefully bake and package the cookies for my dad’s hunting trips, but she’d make sure to leave a few out for my brother and I. To this day, when I see a monster cookie, it brings back great memories of spending quality time with mom in the kitchen!
Whenever my mother made cookies, we kids would anxiously wait until she was done so we could “lick the bowl” (we used spoons, so I’m not sure why we said we were licking the bowl). I’m sure my mom left extra dough in the bowl on purpose. The baked cookies were always good, but so was the dough!
My mom always made Sugar cookies at christmas time and i remember decorating them with my brother and sister as kids, now we all have our own kids and continue the tradition of decorating cookies at my moms house with all our kids and her grandchildren around. Very sweet memories!
Every year, my mom would get out her cookie press and make pressed butter cookies. I loved the dough, so I stood by patiently waiting for a dollop. After they cooled, we would decorate with frosting flowers (or blobs in my case) and it was so much fun. I didn’t like the taste of the resulting cookies, but the process was a fun one!
My most recent favorite baking memory is when my husband (who works in supply chain) decided that he could help make my cake pop process more efficient. By the end of the batch he was decorating like a pro and secretly loving it!
My favorite baking memory is making Swedish gingerbread cookies with my mom at Christmas time. She’s Swedish, so she has passed down a lot of traditions from her childhood that have to do with food and baking. I love her for that :)
My kids, I raised them baking in the kitchen. The holiday cookies, too much fun. Even now, all grown up, they know the holiday cookies are coming, but I can only get them to decorate one now.
i remember the day my cousin taught me how to take chocolate chip cookie dough and put it in the microwave! You heat a few scoops (or 5) just enough for the chocolate to melt and the dough gets gooey then you eat it with a spoon! That and a glass of milk is TO DIE!!!
I have made Nestle Toll House cookies for over 30 years now–I, of course, have the recipe memorized. They are really the best chocolate chip cookie ever. My ultimate compliment came when a friend told me that her own son told her that I made the best cookies he’s ever had. My friend felt a little jealous, but she understood!
Baking chocolate chip cookies with my mom and the smell of cinnamon and sugar from Christmas morning muffins!
Thanksgiving and Christmas time are truly my favorite time of year because of the amazing scent of fresh baked goodies coming from the oven. Ever since I was a little girl it was a passion of mine to bake, mainly because of the smile and pleasure it brings me to see my family eat something that i have taken time and effort to bake. Noel nut balls are my favorite, The kitchen usually gets all covered in confectioner’s sugar, and smell of warm pecans are just heavenly! Wrapping the cookies are just as much fun, I love finding the perfect container and (trying) to make the perfect bow.
I love baking around Thanksgiving and Christmas!
I love making cookies every Christmas with my daughter :)
My favorite baking memory is making holiday cookies with my little man. We make whatever kind of cookie he has a hankering for at that moment, but I loved the time we made gingerbread men and he decorated some all on his own. Looking forward to including our new little munchkin in our baking memories!
Three generations in the kitchen together baking for holidays and Sunday dinners…Grandma, Mom, and me like clockwork. We each had our own jobs and performed them easily and naturally, talking all the while! Best. Memories. Ever.
My mom use to make mini bite size pecan pies and we would gobble them up everytime!
I do love making pumpkin whoopie pies as gifts for everyone during the holidays.
I have so many memories of baking as a child, winning 4-H cookie contest in grade school, making 30 turkey shaped cakes for people my mom worked with… But I guess one of the most memorable would be in recent years when I was baking a cake. Mixed up the ingredients, poured it in the pans, placed them in the oven, went into the den to sit with my family and some company that was visiting… oh yes, we had an audience. I begin to smell something burning, rush into the kitchen, fling open the oven to a billowing cloud of smoke. It looked like a volcano had erupted in my oven. I closed the door, turned around and looked at one of my daughters and said “Did you put self rising flour in my all purpose flour container?” She smiles… Wasn’t funny at the time but makes me laugh till I cry now.
I think my favorite baking memory was when my son wanted me to bake him a birthday cake and wanted the icing to be army green. Not very tasty-looking but he was perfectly happy!!
Baking Christmas cookies with my mom and little brother when I was a child. For some reason, the cookies I make now just never taste the same.
My fav baking memoires are with My mom back in my country during the holiday season.The fresh baking smell just invigorates your holiday spirit.And now my baking memories are with my kids whol absolutely love it when mom;s baking .Be it cookies, cakes OR cake pops.The excitement and the look on their faces when we first open the oven door is what makes me want to do more and more.
Pals
My Mom could knit in the dark and read books at lightening speed but she couldn’t really cook or bake. My childhood was spent eating tuna casserole, hockey puck fried burgers and dry pork chops. The only thing she could make from scratch was Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. She would treat us to them throughout the year but at Christmas she would make batches and batches of them, it was wonderful. My Mom passed away when I was 12 and I don’t remember us ever having a day of baking together or any recipes passed down, but the very first thing I taught myself to make we’re those cookies and I think of her whenever I make them.
I
The first time I used an egg wash (which up until that point had been, in my mind, incredibly complicated and not worth the trouble) I was completely sold. The honeyed ham pastries I made were not only delicious, but they glistened like the sun… I even commemorated the moment by taking a picture.
My favorite baking memories are the ones I am making right now with my 5 year old son. He loves baking cookies!
My mom handed down her mom’s blackberry jam cake recipe to me. She would only make it for Christmas and it had raisins, walnuts and wonderful buttermilk icing with pecans on top. It’s always been a hit with friends and family. It’s such a special cake.
I’ve taken over making my moms Christmas pecan tarts for 12 years now and have started my own Easter bread tradition (18 to 22 loaves every Easter) and so far my son has started to help putting the sprinkles on.
I would have to say that my favorite baking memory was when I was a sophmore in high school and me and my best freind really wanted to make some brownies. But after making the batter we decided we would rather eat the entire batch of brownies before we could even get them in the oven. Needless to say we didnt feel to well after we were finished. But we had a great time and lots of pictures to remember that day.
i do not bake
For a few years my best friend from childhood and I would make Christmas/holiday cookies to take to our respective families. Even though we always vowed to start prepping the day before, we always ended up doing everything in one day but having a great time. We love looking up new recipes for tasty treats!
When I first started dating my now-fiancee, I decided to try out a focaccia recipe to impress him. However, I had never used sea salt before and ended up making something so salty that it was almost inedible. He was such a good sport about the debacle and we laugh about it to this day. Now whenever I make focaccia (correctly), I think about that time when we were first falling in love.
I remember the first time I baked with my baby wrapped in a sling oh-so-freshly newborn. It was a lovely batch of Christmas cookies that she and I whipped up, so cuddly close together.
My favorite memory is when I was little, getting to spend the day with my Grandma baking. She used a Kitchen Aid and would let me slowly add the ingredients to the mixer. I loved getting to see the mixture come together and the process of baking became magical to me. I can’t wait until I have kids that I can share this same experience with.
I have tons of baking memories from holidays to just-because. My favorite holiday memory began almost 30 years ago with my first son and continues to this day with my kids, nieces, nephews and friends. From pies, cookies, gingerbread house parties, we cover every event in style. But the best baking memory is making monthly treats for all of our older neighbors. My kids and I make breads, cookies, and seasonal treats to distribute throughout the neighborhood. In this way we can check in on our friends and give them a little something to smile about as well.
One of my favorite baking memories occurred over Christmas break a few years ago at my grandparents’ home in Tampa. My little sister and I are big fans of Pushing Daisies, a fantastical tv show about a Pie Maker who not only bakes delicious pies, but solves murder mysteries with the help of his PI friend, as well as his supernatural ability to bring dead people to life. Of course, like any good show, it was cancelled in the middle of it’s beautiful second season, causing much pain and dismay.
Thus, Lali and I decided to pay homage to Ned the Pie Maker and Charlotte Charles (childhood sweetheart and cheese lover) through creating a pie worthy of the Pie Hole.
It was going to be a Pear Pie with a Gryuere in the crust. We even tried to use vodka in the crust because, heck, we were going to do it RIGHT.
Well, in our excitement, we should’ve probably consumed less vodka and taken more care to follow directions because that was the WORST pie I had ever experienced. Nothing worked out right and we just giggled the whole time about how the dough wasn’t right and neither was the filling and it was just over all very messy and amateur…
we lovingly dubbed it our “Pear and Failure” Pie, and added it to our series of well-intentioned-but-slightly-amiss baking projects. It’s good we love each other anyway. :)
I once made homemade chocolate chip cookies as a teenager while my mom was on the Atkins Diet. My mom was fine with it until I had to leave to go somewhere and left her to take the warm cookies out of the oven. She says it was torture, and I didn’t even put two and two together until she told me when I got back home. Now we laugh about it everytime we bake chocolate chip cookies (my dad’s favorite).
my mom made cookies and candy every christmas. aroma was fantastic and the taste even better.
My favorite memory is making Christmas candy with my mom. We did it every year and as I have become a mom and have kids I do it with them. It is such a great tradtion. My favorite was always the stain glassed candy. Now that I am the one doing the baking I realize what a pain it is! That being said, it is totally worth it! :)
Baking with my Mom and sister for the holidays. My sister & I used to eat far more than we helped, but now we both bake all the time, and it always makes me feel connected to my sister & Mom, even though we all live many states apart.
My favorite baking memory is watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol and Baking white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies for the holidays!
My favorite baking memory is just getting my apple business started. I love to have my 2 girls help me dip the apples and wrap them to make them darling. They are so talented! I love working in the kitchen with my girls.
I can remember making apple pancakes with my Grandma, fall was a great time for this. Homemade lemon bars in the summertime too! Mmmmm
When my husband and I first got married we would make my oreo cheescake for our friends and neighbors. It was really fun to spend time baking with him.
Every Christmas I bake my granne’s famous shortbread hearts, it’s not Christmas without them!
I taught myself to bake and my mum very rarely joins in but last Christmas we spent a whole day together creating Christmas cakes! It’s now been taken on as a family tradition and it was so much fun.
Love a good full day baking session!
My favorite baking memory is from when I used to live down the street from my best friend. We would always get bored and want to do something, but we’d be hungry at the same time. So what we did to occupy our time was bake! I loved baking with her, and I miss doing so with her oh so very much <3
My mom, and now me, has always been the baker in the family. My favorite memories are sitting at the kitchen table unwrapping I don’t know how many hershey kisses to make peanut butter cookies. I’d spend hours keeping my mom company while she baked.
I’m not sure which memory is better — baking with my grandmother as a child or baking with my 5-year-old son today. <3
My favorite baking memory is spending entire weekends in the kitchen trying to get homemade decorated goodie plates out for all my friends in high school. Wish I had time for it now but so much work Y-Y
oh yess.. my sweet baking memories. my first time baking cake. with my mom. 20 years ago. just plain marble cake. its 8 pm and i really want to bake cake, but there’s no butter left in a fridge, only margarine in pantry. so, we just go with that margarine. and the cake turn out great. but, after it cooled, we slice that beautiful cake, and have a taste.
it taste like SOAP!.
i look back at the margarine package and see an expiring date that has past for 3 or over month if i still remember.
we just laugh over the taste and how the cake has turn sooo pretty but taste like soap.
and that’s my sweetest baking memories. at least i know that i can bake. it did rise well. and i never stop baking since.
I imagined myself as Martha Stewart and decided to recreate her “pansy” cake for my best friend’s baby shower. 3 days and $120 later, the cake was a masterpiece! I’ve never made anything so challenging and so beautiful in my life-and get this, no one took a photo!!!
My favourite baking memory is any time I made cookies with my mom. We’d generally make chocolate chip because they’re both my and her favourite kind, and she’d always give me extra chocolate chips to munch on.
My favorite baking memory is when my kids help in the making of Christmas cookies we were having so much fun that at the end of the evening my oldest son enter me in a Christmas baking contest. We didn’t win the contest but we sure enjoy all the baking, that started from baking cookies to building a Christmas theme cake. We made all sorts of cakes, a Christmas tree out of cupcakes, a melting snow man, a santa claus and many more. We love it.
Watching (and helping) my Dad make fudge. I probably got in the way more than helped, but the finished product was out of this world. One reason it was so good was the gobs of peanut butter he would add to the fudge. I wish I’d have learned how to make it now.
My favorite baking memory is from my childhood when my sister and I would make “Sticky Rolls” or “Blueberry Pinwheel Cobbler.” It was always so much fun to make treats for the family!
I was on a iced sugar cookie benge a few years ago. I ordered them weekly. When I went to visit my sister I always took her grandson some of my treats. The place I ordered from stopped making the cookies. When I went to my sisters my great nephew was so upset I didn’t have cookies with me. I decided to get the ingredients and told him we would make our own iced sugar cookies. I used store bought slice and bake sugar cookies and colored ready made icing. It was a complete disaster and the cookies were the ugliest cookies you could imagine. My little 5 year old great nephew had a ball and he thought the cookies were beautiful. Everytime I looked in a different direction I would catch him tasting a different color of icing. Problem with that? Standing on a stool so he could be counter top level, he would bend over and lick the icing on the cookie. Of course each cookie had different colors, meaning he licked most of the cookies! I took some really cute pictures and it will always be a wonderful memory. And no we didn’t share the cookies with anyone!
My grandma was yugoslavian and like her mother she made a wonderful sweet nut bread called potica., for the holidays.I remember her coming to our house to make potica with my mom when i was about five years old. Back then she kneaded by hand and this time she let me lick the remnants of dough off of her fingers.It seems kind of weird to have done this but I felt so close to her then. and the simplest thing brought such joy.
I know I’m supposed to choose one favorite but that’s just too hard! When I was little, my sisters and I would go to New York every year to visit my grandma for Christmas. She would let us help her bake holiday treats and left the decorating completely up to us! She’s definitely the reason I love baking so much as an adult. My second favorite: my boyfriend is part of a mycological society at his university and they were having a bake sale so I made mini cupcakes with puffed up tops and decorated to look like little Mario mushrooms. Everyone loved ’em and my boyfriend loved telling them all I made them :)
My favorite baking memory is baking cookies with my mother. Peanut butter, chocolate chip, sugar were all delicious, but our traditional ones were always snickerdoodles.
Some of my favorite baking moments have been created within the past year and half when I started to embark on this journey of making creative and decorative cake pops for family and friends! One of my most memorable cake pop experiences was when I made mini 3-tier wedding cakes for my future sister-in-laws bridal shower this past spring! I loved seeing her face as I brought them into the house!
i love when my daughter and i bake together even she can not
eat sugar she enjoy decorate cupcakes an we have a lot of fun
My favorite memory is going to my grandmothers house and always creating some sort of treat from scratch.
My little brother has an extremely sweet tooth and he hates being in the kitchen. So on a pleasant day, he was craving one of my mum’s delicious sponge cakes-but momma was out of town. He had no choice but to struck a deal with me (big sis), which is help bake the cake with me and in return wash my car………hahahah! He actually had a good time baking and 6 years later baking is now one of his favorite past times.Who would have thought…;)
One of my favorite memories are baking and rolling Christmas themed cake pops with my friend. We were making gift baskets for some friends.
My favorite memory was baking and decorating my first ginger bread house with my great grandmother and now every Christmas I make a house with my kids in memory of her :)
Love those cake pops!
watching my grandma make butter cookies.
I loved helping my mom shape cookies when I was little, even though mine always looked like blobs instead of her braided perfection.
favorite baking memory…eating all the yum-yums.
Baking pumpkin pie with my dad. Every year i get “training” on making the crust. Which actually means i just have to watch. Keep in mind I’m 37. Wonder when I’ll move up to the hands on training part of this course.
My favorite baking memory is my mom making tea rings every Christmas. The cinnamon roll dough smelled amazing while baking and my brothers and sister and I couldn’t wait to get a piece of it! My mom always topped it with a powdered sugar glaze and green and red cherry halves. She passed away on September 16 this year – now it is up to us to keep the tradition going.
Each year for the holidays my mom would gather all the daughters to help her make poteca bread – a delicious spiraled bread with a nut and honey filling. You have to stretch the dough until it covers the table, then you fill it with nuts and roll it up. It was fun to make and amazing to eat!!!
My favorite baking memory was making biscochitos with my mom every christmas in every christmas cookie cutter out there. I still love when she makes them even if they are only in circles these days! Brings back so many memories!
my favorite baking memory was my first: when i learned how very important it was to separate wet from dry ingredients before baking! never makin’ that mistake twice! :D
My favorite baking memory is spending every Christmas season baking cookies and decorating them with my family. I hated it when I was younger but as I have gotten early, it’s become something I look forward to!
When I was little, my mom would let me help her make cookies and other treats all the time. Her mixer also had a blender attachment and we would make milkshakes sometimes. A couple of months ago, I pulled out her mixer to make cookies, and all these childhood “helping Mom” memories came rushing back. The mixer has a distinct smell (not a bad one) when it is running that helped those memories.
When i was learning to make the big fluffy biscuits that we had about every meal it was very difficult. My dad would say every time.” who made the nice crackers” then everybody would throw a fit laughing, even me.
I think my favorite baking memory is pretty recent. I was making something and went to grab the powdered sugar. I reached in the cupboard, grabbed it, and…promptly dropped the entire container on the floor…about two pounds of powdered sugar. I took a deep breath, swept it up, put it in a bowl, and introduced my one-and-a-half-year-old to powdered sugar. That mess got MUCH worse before it got better, but it was so much fun!
I have been baking cookies with my mother since I was about 3 years old. Cookie baking is a big deal with my large extended family and during the past 25+ years. Mom has taught me to bake dozens of her fantastic cookies that are a big hit everytime.
my grandmother would make me cinnamon rollups from left over piecrust.
I’m Iranian and our New Years falls around mid March on the first day of spring…every year since I can remember, I help my mother make all the cookies, sweets, chocolates, candies, and baklawa that you can dream of. My favorite was always these little pastries we call “window pastries”…they’re made out of paper thin batter that you pick up with little flower shaped molds and drop in to hot oil and then top with icing sugar. My mom would always let me drop them in and then she would scoop them up once they came to the surface…way too many laughs were made in the process. I hope someday I can continue that tradition with my children too :)
When I was a kid I remember my Mom baking lemon cake from a box. I used to hate it! She would always over bake the cake, and that created a thick crust around the cake and I didn’t like it. I thought I hated lemon cake! I kept telling her to take the cake out sooner but she didn’t listen. She listened to me once but never again. I think she just liked it that way. Now, when I bake a lemon cake (from scratch) I think of my mom, and it makes me smile. It turns out that lemon cake is one of my favorite cakes!
My mother wasn’t a big baker, but every Christmas she’d pull out her grandmother’s recipe for Polish Kolaches (jam cookies) and bake up huge batches of them. She’d let me help cut the butter into the flour, line up tray after tray of the base cookies, and fill them with what seemed to me like endless exotic flavors of jam (to a grape jelly girl!). We were a busy family so there was precious little shared kitchen time – but I could always count on that holiday time with her. It’s a tradition I love sharing with my boys now!
My grandmother is the baker of our family. I’ve never baked along side of her but I love watching her making her famous cakes. No measuring cup, no recipe book. Just her 70+ years of experience. Love my Nana!
I love baking (and eating) desserts! Sometimes they turn out good enough to eat, and other times it just a plain blob of disaster. (I’m still trying to figure out how to make the perfect french macarons!) Thankfully, I have a family who doesn’t mind scrapping off the burnt parts! =)
My favorite baking memories are from my mom baking my Birthday cake every year during my childhood. I loved to help her making it all from scratch. It was always so yummy and moist. It was filled with jelly, custard cream and peaches in the between layers of the sponge cake. The cake tasted even better the day after. It was so special and filled with so much love.
My favorite memory would be the whole family in the kitchen, whether it be doing something productive like baking or just running through and sneaking a bite of something.
My favourite baking memory is definitely one of the best and funniest memories I have of my grandmother. I have been baking since I was a little, little girl (under supervision of course!) and when I was around 6 I had gone to my nana’s house after school and begged her to make a cake with me. On this day we were stuck inside during a heavy storm and couldn’t get to the grocery store down the street for ingredients. Living in the south, there were always terrible thunder/rain storms, which often made it almost impossible to go out and drive anywhere. So my nana had this brilliant (and by brilliant I mean terrible) idea to make a makeshift cake out of chocolate pudding mix. She was never really a baker. My goodness it was such a disaster! I mixed it all up and poured the watery pudding mix into a pan and she happily popped it into the oven. 30 minutes later we were sitting on the kitchen floor crying our eyes out from laughing so hard over the gooey, watery pudding cake my grandma had made us concoct. I still bring it up with her to this day and tease her about it and we still laugh just as hard as the day we made it.
P.S. I swear I’m a great baker now. I was six I didn’t know any better!
My favorite baking memory is the first time I baked with my mom and we made her famous cheesecake. It was the first time she taught me her recipe and allowed me to do it alone. To this day it is still my favorite thing to bake!
Memories can be made anytime. The posted pecan pie recipe is an American classic that should bring holiday memories for everyone. Don’t wait until a holiday….my family enjoys pecan pie anyday!
Making Christmas cookies and coffee cakes with my mom is always my favorite part of the holidays.
My favorite baking memory involves my mom, grandma, great grandma & I all baking dozens of pies in great grandma’s kitchen every year for thanksgiving. Huge Italian family, there was one year we made 8 pumpkin pies & 8 apple pies… by the last 2 of each flavors they almost became apple pumpkin pies because they almost got all the ingredients mixed together because we were all so exhausted.
Some of my favorite baking memories involve my Mom and baking holiday cookies known as Peppernuts. Each batch was a two day adventure and we would end up with about 300 cookies per batch. That left a lot of time for talking and laughing and just spending time together.
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. The time i remember is her hand mixer got out of controll splattered us with cookie dough ( haha ) . It Went all over the walls and hair . 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 :)
I have always loved decorating butter cookies at Christmastime with my brothers. We tend to have contests on who can make the funniest, grossest, or most sprinkled cookie. I have and continue to make great memories with my family while baking.
One of my favorite baking memories is the pie baking contest my sister and I had last year. We were our own judges, but who could lose when there’s pie involved?!
my favorite baking memories are all of baking with my cousin for different family holiday get togethers. My favorite memories of us were when we took our first cake decorating class together, when we made beautiful butterfly cupcakes for Easter, and the first time we made cake pops (they were your cupcake cake pops!)
My favorite baking memory was just this past august when I had my birthday. My husband never baked before and when he asked what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday, I told him just a simple homemade yellow cake with chocolate frosting. He looked uneasy but I told him I would be supervising just to make sure and follow the directions on the box hahaha and so he did and even though he did it with hesitation and nervousness, I got a wonderfully baked and tasty birthday cake! so far the BEST I’ve ever had! :0)
One Christmas season, my two younger brothers and I were baking sugar cookies with our mother. She carefully kneaded the dough and sprinkled flour on our kitchen table in preparation of rolling the dough out flat. My brothers and I proceeded to help spread the flour around the table and suddenly Mom exclaims, “Stop being so careful, you’re not getting messy enough! Let’s have some fun!” She slapped both hands down on the table and gently patted our cheeks full of flour. Hands down, my favorite holiday memory. :)
My mother always made the pies for Thanksgiving dinner. One year she let me help her make the apple pie and let me make a small one for me. I will always remember that day.
My favorite Baking memory has to be : Visiting my Great Grandmother and spending time in her kitchen watching her make dozens of home made sugar cookies and patiently waiting for them to come out the oven and then my job was to place a pecan half or Maraschino Cherry right in the center. She was always so loving and tender even when she cold do the baking as much, she passed on her butter cookie recipe to me. Every year on my birthday, since we shared the same birthdate, I make them with my boys.
Our family went to England and discovered a small cookie bakery called Ben’s Cookies. Unfortunately, they don’t ship to the US. So, we went online and actually found their chocolate chip cookie recipe. We tried it and it was wonderful!
Baking mini blackberry pies with my family after spending the day picking the berries :)
My favorite baking memory was making a disastrous gingerbread house with my family during Christmas time when I was young. The roof caved in on our gingerbread house, my mom was mad because my brothers and I were laughing, and finally my dad came in after attempting to repair the roof for hours and triumphantly declared that he “fixed it”. Baking and decorating that disaster of a gingerbread house was one of my favorite childhood memories.
My favorite baking memories are around the holidays. My mom and I share in making cookies and cakes and pies. We love to give them away as gifts as well as eat them ourselves!
LOVE your recipes! :)
My mom was all about making memories for her six children as we were growing up. Every holiday we would bake multiple kinds of cookies and breads from scratch, decorate with all the fancy trimmings (like I see on Bakerella) and then we’d deliver baskets to our neighbors. Now I’m baking for my own family and grandkids and not a holiday goes by that I don’t think of my mom and the love she put into teaching us how to cook and to ‘love thy neighbor’. I love your website because it reminds me of happy childhood memories.
My best memories are of my Mom baking holiday cookies with my kids. She was from the depression, so she would actually freeze and reuse any cookie dough scraps for future batches!
My favorite baking memory is cutting out heart shaped cut-outs on the top crusts of my mom’s apple pies to make them pretty :-) I’m 24 now and we still do it very year!
We love cooking/baking. Thanks for the recipes!
Everything looks so yummy!!!!
I remember when I was growing up, I would just pour through my mom’s cook books whenever I was bored. I would pick out a recipe and carefully check to make sure I had all of the ingredients. My dad was always happy to eat whatever came out of the oven, even the failed attempts.
My favorite baking memories involvencelebrating Eid with my family every year. Usually all my women family members come together to make baklava(we never buy phyllo dough…EVER), and also borek which is home made dough with Turkish feta(less crumbly) and parsley. It is so much fun to joke around and create new memories with the younger kids. Unlearn so much about eachother and also every elder’s baking technique….plus the smell of yummy baked goods dont hurt either ;)
Fave memory would have to be making chocolate chip cookies for the first time with the kidlet, mainly because she loves them so much and asks for them all the time. Because she knows her mom makes the best (for her that is lol).
I was super excited when I made my first successful cakepops (took a few tries) with my best friend. We made baby blocks for a baby shower!
My favorite baking memory when I first used a Kitchen Aid mixer to beat a meringue. Heaven! I never knew what stiff peaks were until that day.
In high school, my best friend and I set out to make a cake for my birthday party, decorated like my plates, napkins, etc. We were convinced that our icing recipe was wrong- there was no way that we were supposed to use a box of powdered sugar…so we only used one cup. Needless to say, the cake looked fabulous, but the icing tasted like WAX! I will never try to “correct” a recipe like that again!
The perfect kitchen tool to begin my holiday baking. Holiday baking began very early with my Mom. We started with making various candies, and always ended making cutouts and using the leftover powdered sugar from candy making to make the frosting used for the sugar cookies. So much fun because my mother let us use our creative genius to decorate the cookies….or at least we thought we were genius!
Pumpkin is my absolute favorite ingredient of all time. So I love to make pumpkin pies every year for my family. I usually make two or three large ones to bring to mom’s, dad’s, and my boyfriend’s gatherings; but then I also make mini ones that I hoard all to myself to enjoy for the next week. Yum!
My favorite memory is any of the baking I do with my son and seeing the excitement he has when it is done.
Just before Christmas we would have a “cookie day”. All my cousins would come over (six of us in all) and we would each pick two kinds of cookies we wanted to make. We would bake all day and have so much fun. When I grew up, I continued this tradition with my nieces and then with my own child. I hope when they are grown and have children of their own they will continue this tradition.
Some of my most wonderful baking times were at Christmas… when I was a little girl the excitement of coming home from school to see all the “cookie” stuff out and ready to go!
I love fall baking! The smell of pumpkin bread in the oven is my favorite.
My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas cookies with my family and friends.
I REMEMBER WHEN I MADE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES FOR MY FAMILY TO ENJOY. I WAS LITTLE AT THE TIME AND I LOVED MAKING BAKED GOODS.
I loved the time my mother was visiting and my neighbor gave me a lot of apples my mother helped me make apple pies to freeze and saved all the apples. We enjoyed apple pies all winter.
Baking and decorating sugar cookies for christmas.
My favorite baking memory is at my aunt’s house, mom, me, and Aunt Donna making amazing cakey chocolate cookies with buttercream icing. OMG I still love those cookies!
I bake Christmas cookies, every year. Even with a broken arm one year! I love to teach my kiddos how to cut out and frost the perfect sugar cookie. I’ve had the same mixer for over 20 years and it has LOTS of miles on it. Gotta love those kitchenAids!
At age 82 my baking days are much fewer than they once were
but I still love the smell and the finished product.
Please pick US!
Yummy!
Every November Mom would start baking Christmas cookies, package them in colorful foil wrapped coffee cans and put them in the big deep freezer. Then mid-December she would get them all out, thaw them and make up plates of goodies for friend, family and neighbors. Only sometimes her sneaky kids would dip into the frozen treats and there wouldn’t be enough of a favorite goodie to pass out.
I have lovely memories of making Yankee Panky (basically flapjacks) with my grandmother as a small child. She was the best cook and baker I have ever met and I miss her terribly. But sometimes I make her recipes as a way to connect with her.
When I was growing up, my mom used to be a stay-at-home mom so she would have a lot of time in the kitchen with my brothers and I. It was her hobby so I remember sitting on the kitchen counter licking the frosting off of spoons or eating cookie dough. My favorite memory would have to be when she made actual playdough. I know it may not be something you could eat, but the process of it was just like making actual bread. It would have to sit on the the counter until it rose and we would have to bake it as well in the oven. After, my brothers and I would have a kick from playing with it. (:
My memories of making Christmas cookies with my Grandma and Mom every December are ones that I remember fondly. Whenever I bake now I feel them with me!
I just started baking. I love making your cream cheese pound cakes and everyone who had a slice has loved it as well. It makes me happy to bake.
I used to make spritz cookies with my babysitter at Christmas time. Now, whenever I make them I think of Aunt T and how fun they were to make toegther.
Never can forget baking chocolate chip cookies with my grandmother.
I always use ‘family recipes’ but i make them my own by adding and subtracting stuff. We love the holidays
I am very lucky to have so many happy memories of baking with my mom. The ones that stant out are at Christmas. Baking day after day cookies and breads and cakes. These were gifts for nieghbores and friends and family. My mom is no longer here but my daughter and I have made many memories.
My favorite baking memory involves rainy days with my Mom. She makes this amazing apple cake in the fall and I loved feeling the warmth of the oven inside the house while hearing the rain on the roof. The smell of the apple cake was divine!
My favoite baking memories was back when I was in junior high school. When we had our first home educ. classes. It was the first time most of the boys and some of us girls ever were allowed to step foot into a kitchen. The first rule was anything we baked we had to eat at the end of the class. No matter how good or bad it tasted. I am sure the teacher gave us good recipes to use. Most of the time, I think she just wanted to get a good laugh and see all of our faces when we tasted what we made. I know we all had fun laughing at each other and we really loved going to that class every week. I still love baking to this day and I actually did become a good baker on my own. I quess the old saying practice makes perfect is true.
i remember my mama pulling the stool up to the stove when i was 3 yrs old, she taught me how to cook scrambled eggs, bacon and toast……she has a photo of me and my grandparents sitting at the table with me at 3 , with the breakfast i wanted to make for them……i’m 44 yrs old now and i will nevr forget it
My favorite baking memory is….the first time I made cake pops for my family. Christmas 2010. The red velvet reindeer ones were the favorite.
My favorite baking memory took place when I was in high school – my friend Michelle invited us all over to her house to bake Christmas cookies together – we made soooo many different types of cookies and then afterwards, we sat around and wrapped them up in cute little Xmas bags and finally divided them up to give away to our friends… it was just a fun time with friends and we all got to eat lots of cookies too! :)
My mom, my sister, my nieces and I gather prior to every holiday to bake my Grandma’s nut rolls. We each have our own part: measuring, mixing, rolling and assembling the final product. We have lots of laughs and are always amazed at how quickly time goes. We talk about changing some ingredients but always end up with the same ones. We make enough to share with friends.
I love baking sugar cookies with my siblings. When I was in high school, I had a particular way of decorating and my siblings would all come in and mess things up. I had a meltdown, saying they were ruining Christmas! My mom ensured me they were all beautiful and to this day, every year we talk about the Great Cookie Meltdown.
My favorite baking memory comes from making holiday cookies with my mom every December. We bake at least 5 different kinds, working late into the night after the rest of our family has gone to bed. I think the best part is when we give them to friends and neighbors. It’s a blast to see their faces light up when they get a tin or plate of homemade cookies!
During my teenage years, I made a lot of brownies. My dad had a favorite kind and always requested them. The edges would bake up over the pan, and he had dibs on those crusts. I loved to make them just for him.
Sounds like a good recipe.
I remember baking cookies with my four kids “helping” me.
My favorite baking memory was from college – when we baked a cake (from cake mix) for a friend’s birthday – i think that was our only attempt. We tried to be innovative by baking banana slices into it. It tasted fine – but the bananas all sunk to the bottom – making a soft paste as our base.
My favorite cooking memory is definitely Thanksgiving. I’ve been cooking it with (and learning from) my Grandmother for years!
I haven’t had many baking experiences (tried cake pops and failed) but I did make cupcakes for my daughter’s 1st birthday for her daycare. They were successful for the most part. Hopefully for next year she will help a little…
My favorite baking memory is making christmas cookies with my sister for santa on christmas eve every year. we always had a blast and made some crazy designs with different colored icing. our poor parents had to eat so many cookies because we would set out so many for santa because we made so many special for him.
I will always remember making cake pops with my mother in law…. when she was still my boyfriends mom. I feel like it was a special moment where we found a common interest.
My favorite baking memory is that of being a 10 year old girl and making Toll House cookies for the first time and eating so much of the cookie batter before the cookies were even baked.
My grandmother is 76 years old and this lady is still the Queen of the kitchen. I have so many memories with her in the kitchen. Now I try to recreate the same memories with my children. I love making chocolate cakes with Maw Maw. Yummy!!
Baking chocolate chip cookies with my Mom.
My favorite baking memory was not a family one, but with my very best friend that I think of as a sister. Before we had kids, we’d get together and bake Christmas cookies together. She’d bring over her hand mixer (and I’d have mine) and we’d get to work. I would make about 10 different kinds of cookies, and we’d try to come up with a new one each year. She’d keep me company and chop chocolate for me. I made my cookies for our husbands work and I’d mail them home to my family. Neither of us had family here, so we were each others families for the baking. I still smile when I think of her while baking now that she lives in WA and I am still here in CA. Everyone enjoys getting my cookies this time of year. I think last year I made over 1600 cookies. I give them to everyone, I just love to bake and give them all away. I miss my Sister/friend though. Now, I’ll start new traditions with my kiddo schmiddos. :)
Love your blog, love your treats, so happy for your success. I look forward to coming here and finding something new to try!
My most memorable baking moment would definitely have to be baking brownies with my 4 year old son, for his daddy all the while saying “Mmmm, smells really good mommy!”
My favorite baking memory is Christmas baking from my childhood. My mom would make sugar cookies, and we’d cut them out with Christmas cookie cutters. Then, before they were baked, we’d paint them with egg yolk that my mom dyed with food coloring. They were so fun! She would also make spritz cookies and make Christmas shapes with her cookie press. She would flavor each color of dough according to color: green-mint, pink-peppermint, yellow-banana, and white(plain)-almond. She would save some of each color of dough, and then we’d create cookies of our own, using the dough like modeling clay. It was always so fun (yet sad!) to eat each of our own Christmas Cookie Creations. :)
My favorite baking memory – hands down is baking with my now 6 year old son. He LOVES to bake, and always asks to lick the bowl after. He’s getting to be such a pro, but I miss that he can’t fix next to my mixer on the counter any more!