I love this time of year. When fall rolls around I get even more excited about baking than I do any other time of the year. Summer ends and the real baking begins. The last months of the year are full of special reasons to spend time with family, share smiles, and bake sweet memories.
One of my favorite baking memories is making pecan pies with my uncle. We make them every year around Christmas but I thought I’d share the recipe with you again a little early this year. It’s too good to wait until December.
My grandmother used to make these pecan pies. Her recipe made three perfect pies at a time. She made them every year for family and friends. She loved it. And when she became less able to keep up with the same quantity of pies she liked to make, my uncle Ronnie became the official pie maker. He doesn’t bake and he’s not really a dessert guy but he makes a mean pecan pie. He’s been making them now for well over a decade since my grandmother passed away. He’s continued making them every year for friends and family to carry on his Mama’s tradition. And now I bake with him every year I can and if not I make sure to bake them in my own kitchen. It’s our family’s way of keeping her with us during the holidays.
And the pies are delicious too, so that’s awesome.
Of course, I had to put my touch on them and make them mini. Major cute. But I still wrap them just like she did. Simple and sweet. I love these refrigerated and I eat them like a giant pecan pie cookie.
Here’s the recipe how my grandmother made it and here’s a link to the original post with step-by-step photos demonstrated by my uncle and a little more about my grandmother.
And keep scrolling for a fun giveaway below…
Mama's Pecan Pies
Ingredients
Instructions
In a separate bowl, crack open six eggs. Remove the “roosters” and loosely beat the eggs with your spoon.
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And now, I’d love for you to share your favorite baking memory.
Holiday or any day.
You could be the lucky baker to win a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and a Williams-Sonoma Gift Card.
- Prize includes a KitchenAid Stand Mixer (valued at approximately $650) and a $200 Williams-Sonoma gift card. Approximate Retail Value: $850. Tasty!
- Giveaway runs from September 24, 2012 at 12:00 am ET through October 8, 2012 at 11:59 pm ET. Sorry, Time’s Up! Winner will be announced this week.
- One entry per person. You must live in the U.S. for this one (I’m sorry my international friends) and be 18 or over, too to be eligible to win.
- To enter for a chance to win the mixer and gift card, just leave a comment on the website and share your favorite baking memory. And if you don’t have one yet, the giveaway lasts long enough for you to bake one. : )
- One winner will be chosen at random and announced during the week of October 8th in a follow up post here on the site.
- Note that it may take a few minutes for your comment to display.
Good luck guys and I can’t wait to read your baking memories.
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This post is sponsored by Nestlé® Toll House® Morsels, the perfect special ingredient for all of your family’s favorite treats!
Most favorite memory is the new ones I am creating all the time with my two little ones. They love to help mama bake!! Our favorite is cupcakes
My favorite baking memory is the Treasure Chest cake I made for my son’s 8th birthday. It was even filled with gold chocolate coins and candy bars. At that point I realized I could bake anything I set my heart to. The first time I made a Buche de Noel and French Macarons was pretty cool too.
My favorite baking memory is from elementary school. My mom and I would bake cupcakes for my entire grade in my elementary school for my birthday (over 100). Since my birthday was around Easter, we would make Easter basket cupcakes–vanilla frosting topped with green coconut (grass)and pastel peanut M&Ms as the eggs.
My favorite baking memory was learning how to make my Grandma’s special banana cake. She would make this cake for every family get together. I still have the recipe I wrote on notebook paper when I was 12 and she taught me how to make it. This past Christmas I put my own twist on it and made the recipe in cupcake form. Think of her every time I make it!
Without getting into too much history, my dad was, at one point, living rather thriftily after a really ugly divorce from my mom and he was living with his girlfriend (my future stepmom) in her old trailer. It wasn’t glamorous but that little trailer was warm and cozy and I have a ton of great memories, which are even more precious now; my stepmom recently passed away due to brain cancer.
One memory that really stands out was an Easter cake we made; she was a whiz in the kitchen, to include cake decorating. It was pretty simple — cutting up three round cakes to form a bunny shape, then frosting it and sprinkling with coconut flakes. We decorated the base around the bunny with green coconut flakes and jelly beans. It was so much fun and I felt so accomplished at our masterpiece!
My favorite baking memory is with my grandmother baking chocolate chip cookies. She had made the recipe so many times, she never needed to measure out any of the ingredients. She knew and felt the right amounts. That’s how I love to envision the art of baking – lots of love, knowledge and recognizing the “feel” of what you are doing :).
Growing up, all of the women in the family would get together before holidays to bake pies and talk. It was a great time learning the secrets of pie making and bonding with the women of each generation.
One of my favorite baking memories growing up was helping my Mom pick out which cookies we would make for Christmas. A must have every year were almond flavored tree cookies from a cookie press. My mom liked to dip just the edge in chocolate once they were cooled. My sister and I would always help and “accidentaly” drop our cookies in the bowl. Now that I’m older I can appreciate the hint of chocolate from just dipping the edge.
My Favorite Baking Memory comes from my childhood. I am one of seven children. My Mother always had to come up with ways to make meals fast and easy. I remember hearing the WAPP of the pillsbury refrigerated dough against the kitchen counter. She was always doing inventive things with them. My favorite was a sloppy joe casserole that she would put the dough on top of in the shape of hearts. All of us would get our own scoop of LOVE,,,I LOVE my Mom!
My favorite baking memory is making biscuit with my granddad. He was very rarely in the kitchen but when he was he was making biscuits and he taught me how to make the flaky layers!
my favorite baking memory is baking sugar cookies with my mom. she usually did the actual mixing and baking but i got to do most of the decorating. half of them were decorated with sugar before baking and the other half were decorated with homemade buttercream after baking. sugar cookies are still my favorite to decorate and eat (and least favorite to make! the dough gets so hard to handle!).
When I finally learned to bake bread with my husband’s grandma, who makes killer bread. Now I do too.
My most fond childhod memory of baking comes from my Grandmother Marion. Every holiday season, special event, or birthday my Grandmother made banana sticks and Toll House cookies. Now these two items may not sound glamorous or even unique, but just the thought of them reminds me of family gatherings, laughter and love. Grandma always let my sister and I help make these two family classics. I learned how to measure, fold, combined, and sneak a bite of cookie dough! Love you Grandma!
My Grandma and I would always bake Pecan Candy every year around Christmas. Those were awesome times! I may consider making mini pecan pies this year!
My favorite baking memory is baking a yellow cake in my Holly Hobby oven that bakes cakes with a light bulb, and my grandfather telling me that it was the best cake he had ever eaten. That was the start of my love for baking! Thank you so much for inspiring me with your website….Now, hopefully if I win, I will make more baking memories with my daughter because she’s always asking me if we can bake something together.
I used to make delicate, delicious sugar cookies with my grandma. And I loved making lots of kinds of Christmas cookies with my mom–especially the roll-out sugar cookies which we’d use the cookie cutters on and decorate with yummy frosting!
My favorite memory was baking for Christmas with my Grandma she used to make tons of cookies and goodies for Christmas including mini pecan pies which were my favorite! I can’t wait to make yours – I don’t have my grandma’s recipe. :(
My mother is a christmas cookie queen… as a child, I remember spending whole weekends baking 20+ varieties to give out to our neighbors and extended family. My siblings dreaded the marathon, but I loved it. We’re all grown now with our own families, so mom takes care of the bulk of the cookies on her own, but I still look forward to traveling home for Christmas where she saves my favorite recipes for us to bake together.
For Christmas, I generally don’t buy people gifts. Instead, everyone gets a goodie bag full of delicious homemade candy and baked goods.
I love putting on some Christmas music and baking away. The best part is when they open up their bags and see their favorite treats inside!
I love to bake and fall really is the start of a great baking season! My grandmother also makes a great pecan pie. She has a giant pecan tree in her front yard that she picks fresh pecans from to make her pies. Her and my grandfather can be found in the living room shelling pecans on any given fall day. She’s passed on the recipe to me and now try to make a batch each year. I too have put my own spin on it and made mini and bite size pies! Love you GRAM!
My husbands grandmother makes scratch chicken and noodles and biscuits and I will never forget the first time my daughters and I made her noodles from scratch. It was so much fun to know that we were making something that had a special meaning to our family.
My favorite baking memory is pie, too. Making pies with my mom & Grandma while they taught me the secrets to the crust. And 2 years ago I had my daughters in the kitchen helping me with Thanksgiving pies so my hubby snapped a pic to send to my Mom. She was in the kitchen with my Grandma 450 miles away, but we were all baking the same recipe!
My favorite baking memory is making my son’s 2nd birthday cake and Elmo cake pops with my mom. We baked the cakes 2 days before, so mom froze 2 pieces to make a base cake to stick the pops in. Well, we forgot to level them before stacking them, and after we frosted it, overnight the top layer slowly cracked and slid apart. we just added more frosting!
Making cookies and goodies with my daughter during the holidays.
Baking with my mom as a young girl. She had me baking as soon as I could stand on a stool. I will never forget winning first prize in my age group for oatmeal raisin cookies at age 5 in the county fair. I have loved baking ever since!
My favorite baking memory is making white bread from scratch using my grandmother’s recipe and ancient hand-crank bread-maker. My mother, two sisters and I made 24 loaves, 6 loaves at a time the day or two before every major holiday and hand-delivered them to family gatherings.
My mother and sister still do this and deliver to our family. I live 10 hours from them now, but I still make 2 loaves for myself and my wife. It doesn’t come out quite the same in my stand mixer as when it is hand-cranked, but it is pretty close.
christmas was always my favorite time of the year! my mom, brother, and i would always bake all kinds of goodies this time of year. i remember how fun it was making the pizelles, divinity, buckeyes, popcorn balls, and cut out cookies. all while listening to the elvis christmas album on record. now i have started this same traditon with my own 3 children, elvis christmas songs and all, except on cd :) i know they enjoy it just as much as i did as a child!
My favorite baking memories involve me and my mom and sister making several hundred sugar cookies at a time to ice and give away throughout the Christmas season. Not only did I get to enjoy a fair amount of cookie dough, I also got to enjoy that special time with my two favorite ladies. Nothing could ever replace those memories.
Our family holiday tradition is to make Swedish krumkake – me, my mom, and my grandma…. it is the best!
My favorite memory is new – just finished up watching my 11 year old daughter bake a variety of things for the local fair. So much fun to watch her baking on her own!
My favorite baking memory is one with my grandma. She doesn’t cook or bake any longer, but she always made the very best Christmas cookies. We lived about six hours away, but every Christmas we would bundle up in the car and head to Grandmother’s house. When we got there, there would be stacks and stacks of sugar cookies on the counters, and some more dough ready to be rolled. We would help her roll it out, pick out our favorite cookie cutter, and bake up some more cookies. Once the countertops were entirely covered, we would start decorating with the frosting (scalded milk, powdered sugar and butter!) She would have bowls and containers full of toppings that we would use — mounds of coconut flakes, bowls of red hots, jars upon jars of jimmies, chocolate and rainbow, sprinkles, and always blanched almonds (my dad’s favorite). I cherish those memories and look forward to Christimas every year, where now I try to make Christmas cookies just like Grandma (but of course, they are never the same).
Christmas candy making time! Always with Grandma Freida. The Best. We would always make loaves of bread too. We would slice them up the second they came out of the pan, butter the whole loaf and sit and eat it. Just the two of us.
My favorite baking memory is learning to make snickerdoodles at a young age (maybe 7?) on my own. I have a Better Homes & Garden Junior Cookbook and I love that those cookie pages are so messy and crinkled. And the fashions–whoa!
Pecan pies with my grandfather!! He passed away this year at the age of 95 and didn’t ever share the recipe. I will have to try this one! Very high bar has been set though!!
Each year, I get together with a few friends to bake Christmas cookies – it is a relatively new tradition, but one that I love! Last year, we baked 12 kinds of cookies in one afternoon!
Making lebkuchen with my mom during the holiday! They are my absolute favorite cookie! I can’t wait to pass down the tradition with my girls.
I loved baking with Nana, she made the best bread and cinnamon rolls.
Favorite memory from when I was a child was helping my dad make apple pies. He’d always use the extra dough from the crust and make us little treats.
Baking is the best. We are about to redo our kitchen & I keep saying how I “need” to have a double overn so I can bake while dinner is being made.
My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas cookies with my mom. We would bake dozens and dozens of them.
Every year when I was little, my mom would bake sugar cookies that me and my brother would frost at Christmas time. Gobs and gobs of brightly colored, homemade cream cheese frosting on top of perfectly understated sugar cookies.
My favorite baking memory is learning to make my mom’s cream cheese flan. That’s gotta be one of the earliest memory of my mom and I in the kitchen!
Just last year, my mom, my sister and I decided to try our hands at baking and decorating sugar cookies for Christmas. Although it was a process of trial and error, they turned out tasty and beautiful and we had spent almost 3 days together laughing, joking and having fun all the while making yummy treats for our friends and family. I can’t wait to do it again this year!
My kids and I (now 13 and 11) help decorate Christmas cookies every year with me. Over the years, it has definitely gotten less messy :) but nonetheless, it’s one of my favorite things about Christmas break with them…the glow of the candles, the warmth of the oven, and the ones I love baking with me. After we spend the evening baking/decorating together, we make some hot chocolate with loads of marshmallows and a sprinkling of cinnamon, and snuggle together under big warm blankets and nibble on the cookies :)
Growing up I would bake Christmas sugar cookies with my great grandmother. I loved this for the obvious reason – cookies but also because it took all day and I got to spend that 1×1 time with my great grandmother.
My favorite baking memory is baking cookies and reindeer food with my daughter the night before Christmas.
My favorite memories are baking cookies and pies with my mom for the holidays, and the time I mixed Rice Krispie bars with my hands instead of a spatula. Talk about a mess!
For several years I would bake truffles, pecan tassies, etc. Just a myriad of things for Christmas. I would then box it up and hand out to my friends. I spent hours baking. My freezer, refrigerator, tables, counters were all filled with sweet smelling yumminess.
I love baking in general, but my favorite memories of baking are with one of my sorority sisters in college. She really got me into baking and we had so many fun times in the kitchen.
I will love trying the recipe. I guess a favorite memory also has to do with pecan pies. Whenever we went to visit my mother-in-law’s home, she always had a pecan pie waiting, knowing how much we loved them. What a thoughtful person she was. Thanks for this!
One of my favorites just happened a few weeks ago. My 18 month old daughter wanted to help me make an old family cookie recipe. She stood on a chair at the counter in her apron and was “measuring” and stirring a bowl of quick oats I gave her. She started spooning dry oats in her mouth and kept eating! After we got the cookies in, she pushed her chair to the sink and splashed in the dishwater, doing dishes! The water from the splashing mixed with the dry oats on the floor and made quite a paste! But those smiles and laughs she had made that morning a wonderful memory!
I spent three summers volunteering in the kitchen at Camp Li-Lo-Li, baking up a storm with a lifelong friend. I had many weeks when I would counting up the cookies we made and it was well in the thousand range! While the work was hard, I would not have spent it any other way :D (and for the record, our chocolate chip cookies are still proclaimed the standard to which all other cookies must live up to!)
My grandchildren and I bake cookies and decorate them. We have so much fun doing this and really look forward to our cookie day.
I’ve always loved the smell of my mom’s gingersnap cookies, which she only bakes in the weeks leading up to Christmas… That smell helps usher the holiday season in!
My first homemade birthday cake is my special moment in my life. As we moved from a big city where you can almost anything you need to a small town that you can not find anything you need. My daughter eyes was so bright that day when she saw her b day that I made for her.
My grandma would always bake tons of cut-out cookies when my sister and I were kids. We would get to help her frost and decorate them sometimes. She has some strange cookie cutters so we got to be creative. (A Christmas horse anyone?) Sometimes the cookies would “accidentally” break while we were decorating (usually after they had frosting on them already, of course). We’d have to eat them because you can’t give away broken cookies. :)
My favorite baking memories are the ones I make with my kids.
I first learned how to bake through the cooking class I was taking during middle school. This was my first experience in learning how precise the measurements had to be in baking. I got to make some muffins and meringues. I always enjoy baking, but I always somehow need more mouths to eat all the goodies!
My favorite baking memories are baking with my daughter. She’s 5 and loves to help any way she can. She laughs about the time the hand mixer I had caught on fire trying to make buttercream frosting!
gingerbread men every Christmas! decorating them with clothes and silly faces is always a blast, no matter how old i get :)
My favorite memory is baking banana bread with my grandma. I still have the recipe now, but it never turns out quite as perfect as when she baked it.
I’m from a region in France that borders Germany called “Alsace”. We share a few traditions with German-speaking people, and my favorite one is to prepare “bredele” for Christmas. Those are basically some cookies on only prepare during the Christmas period: there are a lot of varieties, but most of them include nuts (walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts) and spices (cinammon, cloves, anis…). I would spend days in the kitchen (which smelled like heaven, btw) with my sister and my grandmother, baking and sharing memories.
Last year I got your cake pop book and started an adventure that I absolutely love!! Last Christmas I was make snowmen cake pops and my 6 yr old nephew kept watching and waiting for me to take a break so he can ask me a question. As soon as I stopped he begged and begged if he could make his own. It was one of my favorite memories of making cake pops! He was so excited and proud of his little snowman.
During the year my mom and dad would bake together and I would come home from school with the best smells in the house and I would help them,
my Daddy used to start about this time of the year making fruit cakes. Aluminum dish pans full of candied fruit! My daughter and I also spend a weekend baking for her Christmas gifts to the people she works with.
My favorite memory is baking and decorating gingerbread houses with my Mom. We started when I was very young and could only handle the graham cracker version while she worked on the real thing. As the years have gone by we have gotten more elaborate and now make a variety of buildings, not just houses. My 10 year old daughter has also been inlcuded in this tradition over the years and it is something she has grown to look forward to as well. Jobs and life have take my Mom and I to different parts of the country now but even if we can’t get together before Christmas to make the traditional gingerbread houses we adapt them to other holidays like Valentine’s Day just so we can have the fun of making them together. It is neat to see three generations of creativity at the table!
My favorite baking memory was from when I was younger and me and all my cousins and our moms would get together and bake and decorate sugar cookies! It was so much fun and I can’t wait to carry on that tradition with my children!
My favorite baking memory would have to be helping my mom bake a family cake that had been passed down for many generations! Everyone loves it!
My Mom loved to cook and bake. She would host Christmas every year and would bake tons of cookies. She always included us kids and each of us would help her make our two favorite cookies. So with 6 kids, that alone gave her 12 different kinds of cookies. It was our special time with her. Even if she didn’t like the cookie we still got to make it. To this day even though she is gone we still remember them and when we make cookies the names have been changed to whoevers cookie that was. With two of our siblings gone it is still one of my specials ways to remember them and Mom.
My favorite baking memory is making black forest Christmas cookies after my second son was born almost five years ago. I was tired as heck, in lots of pain and so stressed out because of he wasn’t gaining weight well, but backing Christmas cookies made me feel that life was getting back to normal. With my two boys all tucked in and sound asleep upstairs, Christmas carols playing on the stereo, the smell of melted chocolate wafting through the house, I was completely overcome by the feeling of peacefulness. This feeling was so intense and so comforting. Several years prior to my second son’s birth, there was always some turmoil in my heart–worry, disappointment, uncertainty, frustration, sadness… And it is against the backdrop of these last few years and particularly the miserable Christmas of a year earlier, that I found myself so blissfully happy and peaceful. Even now, thinking about it makes me smile.
Hello, baking over the Holidays is what it is all about. I have slowly been learning from my Mom how to make her famous delicious cinnamon rolls. So delicious straight out of the oven.
Now that my daughters are 2 and 4 we bake together in the kitchen. It’s slower and messier than when I do it alone but I love the sense of pride they have when we finish. Sweet memories!
One of my favorite memories was really what got my started baking. My mother has a recipe for candy cane cookies made of two colors of peppermint dough twisted together.
Every Christmas we decided to make them, we always started off so excited… and half way through putting the cookies together, we always began to wonder WHY we had decided to make such a time consuming cookie and vowed to NOT repeat it the next year.
Somewhere between that declaration and devouring the 5 dozen cookies with hot cocoa, the declaration inevitably went the way of the dodo. Next year comes around and we started the cookies all over.
Every year before Christmas we would have a day of baking Christmas cookies. My mom would make the dough and the kids would sit at the table and spend the evening decorating tray after tray. Now that we are all grown, we still get together in early December to make cookies. I love the tradition so much that this year I made some cookies at my house and made my husband decorate with me. I plan to continue it when we have kids :)
Baking Christmas cookies with my mom every Christmas!
Because of my mom and my grandmother I am a baker, just graduated culinary school last week. Most of my favorite memories are baking cookies with my mom, big ol’ chocolate chip cookies, still my favorite.
After my parents divorced, I had a rough time dealing with it. My mom made heart shaped cookies dipped in chocolate with me for Valentine’s Day and told me that I was her Valentine. This way I knew that even when I felt alone, I always had her to depend on and someone who loved me. I loved dipping the red and white hearts into the melted chocolate and then sprinkling sugar on top of them and will always remember doing so with love in my heart for my first Valentine.
I love making christmas cookies with my own children :)
Baking cookies with my Grandma as a kid
Starting before Thanksgiving, mom and I (mostly mom) would start baking Christmas cookies. The kitchen was, and still is, very small so we would end up on the dining room table with all the supplies. Huge batches of cookies were stored in metal potato chip tins and stored frozen for Christmas eating.
At Christmas family and friends were treated with large trays of all the different cookies. Of course, my sister and I would always sneak treats. Somehow, mom would always know, too.
I would have to say my favorite baking memory was when my whole family would get together for the holidays and we would take one day to just bake cookies and decorate them. My family really likes to cook and bake and I think that is where I get it from. I have always been around my mom when she cooks and its so much fun to me. :)
Growing up we had a massive lemon tree in the backyard that would produce huge, fist sized lemons for most of the year. My earliest kitchen memories are of picking out the prettiest ones I could reach so my mom could make lemon meringue pie.
I’ve always loved baking since I helped my mother as a child. But my dad liked to make up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough (without nuts), and then the two of us would sit and eat that uncooked dough while watching football. Great memories!
My younger sister is working on starting a wedding cake business, so right now she is doing cakes out of her apartment. Since I live across the street and love to bake I have become her sous chef. We are really bonding over the experience and are making new amazing baking memories almost every week!
My favorite baking memory is helping my grandmother make her signature rolls. Even as a child, I loved letting them rise for hours and then punching them down one by one. It has been 8 years since my grandmother passed and we’ve all tried to make those rolls ourselves but they never turn out quite the same.
So many… baking sugar cookies with my mom and kids, then decorating them together is always really fun. Especially when the kids were little! So is making big batches of Kuchen and then giving them away to family and friends. My mom is an awesome cook and we are keeping the tradition going!
I favorite baking memory is making Christmas cookies with my mom to hang on our Christmas tree. It was awesome to just be able to eat the right off the tree.
One of my friends and I share a love for baking. Around christmas, we spend hours baking all of our favorite recipe’s, laughing, snacking, and maybe drinking a few glasses of wine ;) Always one of my most favorite times!
I used to love baking with my mom. The Christmas cookie recipe she used was amazing, and luckily I got it from her a couple years ago. The other thing I really remember is my grandma having these huge baking days around the holidays, where other members of the family would come over, and we would just bake for hours. I hold these memories so dear now, as both my grandma, and most recently my mom have passed away.
Definitely baking with my Grandma when I was younger. I miss those days…
My family is French-Canadian, and during the holidays, my mom would make endless amounts of fudge (chocolate, divinity, penuche, peanutbutter) and hand dipped candies (peanut butter balls, peanut butter roll ups, O Henry bars) plus other family delicacies (meat pies, mocha cakes, cretons). It was a 2 month cooking/baking marathon. And I was always her little assistant, ready to lick the beaters or eat the scrapings from the bowls… It’s a wonder I wasn’t as big as Santa by the time Christmas actually rolled around!!!
My favorite baking memory is at Easter or Christmas. Every Easter my mom bakes an Easter Bunny cake with me and my daughter and it’s my daughters favroite thing. I love that she’ll always have that memory of my mom. At Christmas I bake with my mother-in-law and her mom. I love the funny moments we get to share in the kitchen
My favorite baking memory is of my mother, who for a time, was a baking genius! I’ll never forget the raspberry bars that she baked. Soooo good.
My mom makes this pistachio cake, and its just DIVINE. It doesn’t have a frosting on top, but it does have this not very thick amount of toffee my mom also makes. As soon as she makes it, it disappears in seconds, specially if we take it to a family gathering, when she has to make like, three batches. Oh YUM. I’m gonna have to make her make one for me soon! :D
I would love a Kitchenaid mixer, but I’m just not lucky with these things.:'(
Every Thanksgiving I would love making sweet potato pie with my mom. She always brushed the shell with heavy cream and added Khaula to the pie mix. People always wanted to know what give the pie that extra punch, but it was our secret. I can eat the pie hot or cold and it does not alter taste. Even my daughter who is 8 loves grandma’s sweet potota pie.
I have so many baking memories it’s hard to know where to start. But probably my all time favorite is making homemade bread with my kiddo. I started him helping me when he was just three, and he would get to scoop and dump the flour for me. He loved the ‘moke the flour made in the air (his way of saying smoke). He’s 8 now, but I’m glad to say he’s still in the kitchen with me. :)
Christmas and the smell of cinnamon rolls baking. My mother gave cinnamon rolls at Christmas time and for weeks before, she’d bake them all.
My fav baking memory is baking cookies for Santa with my mom.
My grandmother used to make fruit cakes every year…they were good and edible. She changed things up one year and made cookies from the batter instead. They were wonderful! Her recipe made several cakes….so the switch to cookies made for a lot more work. It became our new tradition….a day spent chopping the fruit, making the batter and baking many many pans of cookies!
Baking with my sweet 2-year-old nephew! He loves to help mix the batter and scoop the dough onto the pan. He’s such a cutie!!
A wonderful lady at church gave up an early morning to teach me and her granddaughter her awesome recipe for cinnamon rolls. We had the counters, chairs, and tables covered with these ooey, gooey rolls. Flour was pretty much everywhere too. We had the best time and to this day when I make cinnamon rolls, I think of her.
Baking with my kids – when they were very little – we made cookies, bread, pies – they learned to bake early and loved it and I loved teaching/watching them do it.
They are all bakers now and all teaching their children how to bake. Love that too!
My mom always made big trays of cookies, candies and other sweet treats at Christmas that we’d give away to friends, teachers and neighbors. It was always fun getting to help her!
My favorite memory is pressing, decorating and baking dozens upon dozens of spritiz cookies with my parents during the Christmas holidays. We gave them to friends and neighbors as Christmas gifts!!
My mammaw made biscuits every morning and since I grew up next door, I enjoyed many of them. She kept her flour in a large floral bowl, cut in her shortening, and made a well in the center to pour in the buttermilk. She hand shaped each biscuit and topped each one with melted butter. I’ve never had another one that could begin to compete with Mammaw’s biscuits.
My favorite baking memory is my Mom teaching my sister and I to bake and all the silly mishaps and tasty mistakes. :)
I had a babysitter named Blanche, she was a older woman with a smile and a laugh that would fill her cozy home. She used to bake up a storm during the holidays – she made pies, cakes, cookies and a lot of different candies. She died probably 15 years ago now. I miss her so much and her treats too!
I too keep a family tradition alive, making homemade cinnamon rolls just like my gram used to.
After they are risen in the main you freeze them. Then we wrap them up and give to each of the households on Xmas Eve for them to bake themselves on Xmas morning.
Everyone wakes up to eat Grams freshly baked Cinnamon Rolls while opening presents!
Thanks for the great contest!!
My favorite baking memory is the first time I tried to make cookies by myself. This wasn’t when I was a kid or even a teenager, but in my early 20’s. I was on the phone with my mom trying to figure out if I was doing it right. I couldn’t figure out if my consistency was right, or how to tell that they were done baking. Thankfully, I’ve come a long way since then!
My Nana would bring an apple pie over for the holidays or even just Sunday dinner and she would always make a mini pie for me with the leftover crust and apples. It had a mini latice top and I ADORED it. It made me feel so special and it was incredibly delicious. Minis are the best!
Every year at Thanksgiving, my sisters and I all get together with our mom and help make Thanksgiving dinner – it’s always fun with the 4 of us crammed into the kitchen (just like when we were kids and would see mom & the aunts in the kitchen with grandmom). And now my neice likes to get in on the action as well. Lots of fun memories in the making every year.
Teaching my twin sister to make homemade pizza dough and pizza! As we’ve gotten older (and live in different states), we’ve developed interests independently of one another. It has been nice to share our new skills with each other.
My favorite baking memories are of helping my Nana in her kitchen. Too many good memories to pick just one. :)
My best memories are in the kitchen with my grandma. She taught me how to cook and bake from the time I was big enough to reach the cabinet from standing on a chair. She had so much patients with me. It was something that I hope to do with my grandchildren, someday…..
Every year my mom makes hundreds of her cinnamon rolls to give to friends and family for Christmas. So every year I would help her roll them out and eventually help her eat them. They are my favorite. Now as a pastry chef I make them at work for parties and I always have to make extra for the rest of the staff because they adore them.
My Mom passed when I was young but I remember she would bake pies and she would give me the leftover dough to bake cinnamon/sugar cookies. I would cut them out using a shot glass (lol) and bake them. They were the best…
Licking the batter bowl completely clean while simultaneously annoying my whole family with the spoon-scraping-bowl noises. (Except my mom. She never complained because she totally understood where I was coming from.)
My mom is not a big baker, but she’ll follow a recipe when my dad really wants something sweet. But she did teach us how to bake in her own way. My favorite memory was learning how to make blonde brownies. I learned how to read a recipe and use the stand mixer. I have now made so many brownies that I don’t need the recipe anymore.
My favorite baking memory is making swedish spritz cookies with my mom. We have an old hand crank that been in our family for generations and it always reminds me of Christmas when it comes out.
When I was little, I use to love going to my Grandma’s and bake cookies. that was where I got my love for baking
Some of my best baking memories are when my kids were little and they would want a fancy decorated cake for their birthday. I had a little skill in decorating because I had seen it when my mother took a class when I was a kid. I got some decorating tips at a yard sale and tried to recreate what they wanted. They were always happy, didn’t care that it was not perfect like the ones in the store, and I got to do something special for their birthdays that did not cost an arm and a leg. Later, they got old enough to help decorate and bake – that’s the best part!
When I brought my first baby home from the hospital, my mom stayed the first few days with us. She helped with the baby, but also, we got to spend a lot of time together and she showed me how to make all my favorite foods/goodies from growing up. One of my favorite times hands down with her. We got so much closer.
My grandmother taught me how to make her sugar cookies, and to this day, I’m the only one in the family that can get them to come out like hers. Her secret (which I guess no one else is willing to do?) was to just dig in with her hands to mix the ingredients. Yes, it’s messy… But fun! I can still remember her telling me to just stick my hands in there and squish it all together. We always had a lot of fun in the kitchen together. :)
My favorite baking memory probably isn’t one you’d expect because my parents are awful cooks. AWFUL. When I was maybe 5 or 6 my Dad made oatmeal and decided that he’d rather have oatmeal cookies, so he added some flour to the oatmeal, a box of raisins, and called it a day. He placed balls of this concoction onto baking sheets and and put them in the oven. The results were oatmeal raisin “cookies” that were dense yet totally flexible and tasted slightly metallic. Except for the rasins — those were burnt. It’s 30 years later and we STILL talk about my Dad’s first and only baking experience!
As a little girl, I remember the first time my mother made “Thumbprint Cookies” at Christmas. As I eagerly sat on the other side of the countertop and watched her every move, she told me that my thumb would be just the perfect size for this trick and I proceeded to make my mark. She then filed them with her amazing strawberry preserves, and we both sat in the floor in front of the oven to watch them bake. Such a simple cookie… Such a great memory for me! :-)
My son and a friend entered the 2007 Nat’l Gingerbread House Contest in Ashville, NC. They made “Santa’s Hawaiian Retreat” and we were thrilled when they WON first place in the Youth Division! I love to bake with the kids and we always have gingerbread at Christmas time! Thanks!
My mom and i enjoy baking together frequently, my favorite memory is from just a few years ago, shortly after i got married we started a new tradition of spending the day before thanksgiving, when I was off work, spending all day getting a jump-start on holiday baking and candy making. we made cut-out sugar cookie snowflakes with melted candy/stained-glass centers, filled candies, 3 different types of bark, pumpkin rolls…we’ve done this for several years now and i still remember how much fun we had that first year!
Its probably pretty obvious and traditional, but baking Christmas cookies with my mom was my favorite and even though my son is only 3, when we bake together (usually my husband’s grandmother’s recipe for banana bread) I love that I’m creating those same memories for him
When I first started to bake, I asked my mom for all of her traditional Christmas cookie recipes. When I brought her a sampler of all of them her eyes filled with joy!
Loved that moment! <3
My mom and I spend three to four days together each December baking cookies like crazy. We give some away, but mostly keep them for ourselves. :) We make such a huge mess, and then we take pictures of the chaos. It makes us laugh so hard to look at the mess a few months later. I’m hoping we’ll continue this tradition with my new baby daughter when she’s old enough.
My favourite baking memory Has to be when i baked the most perfect croissant buns!by chance they had come out wayyy better than my mum’s and i was only 12. I never dared to make croissant buns after that. Because i’m afraid of tarnishing my reputation :D XD
I have very fond memories of cutting and making peach pies with my grandmother. She would fly to Toronto Ontario from Cincinnati Ohio during peach season as we had a peach tree in our back yard. My parents would pick the peaches and she would peel slice, and either can, freeze or bake pies. To this day i make peach pie every year as my tribute to my amazing grandmother.
I love baking muffins with my dad!
Like many others, I love my mom’s holiday cooking, but I especially love when my younger cousins come over and we all make Christmas cookies for Santa together. I can’t wait until this Christmas when my new niece can join in! :)
My favorite memory is baking with my grandmother and making her oh so delicious apple cake.
I still make it every Christmas and I think of her always.
Holiday baking with my grandmother as a child. There were always cookies, pies and fudge, but my favorite part was waiting for the perfect day to make the divinity.
I fondly remember my mom and her sisters making candy and mini chocolates. I loved seeing them all together making Rock Candy and all the chocolates.
I still remember mixing together a bunch of ingredients to make a coffee cake with my mom looking over my shoulder the whole time. Later, when people complimented the cake, my mother said that I had made it. I said “no I didn’t-I just mixed together all the ingredients that you told me to”, to which she replied “what do you think baking is?”. I’ll never forget how important that made me feel.
I don’t really have a whole lot of baking memories, but towards the end of my grandmother’s life, I never went to visit her without something homemade. She couldn’t always eat them, especially not towards the very end, but she always made sure they went to someone. The nurses always seemed to visit more often whenever they saw me coming in with a cupcake carrier.
I remember one year my mom went crazy and started dipping everything in chocolate, and I mean EVERYTHING! she dipped pretzels, little ritz crackers with peanut butter on them, my dad’s caramels, I think if she could dip it, she did! It was fun standing with her at the stove and seeing how things came out, and if they were still edible :)
Definitely making sugar cookies with my cousin…
For my 12th birthday I received a card from a relative…on the left side was a recipe for cookies!
It wasn’t put there, it came printed right on the card.
I loved that recipe…it was the very first scratch baking I’d ever done.
My grandma used to let me help her when she was making pies for special occasions. She made a wonderful lemon meringue pie!
My favorite baking moment would have to be when the baby was younger she waddled over to me when I was making brownies and said “ma I wanna help make it!! I gots my maker”, which was a little red spatula. So I lifted her up on the counter and even though all she did was spill flour and cocoa powder everwhere she had a blast and was super proud of herslelf.
It reminds me of the days when my children know I’m going to be baking and they run to the kitchen to help me. They love to crack the eggs open and measure all the ingredients for me. The best part is them looking forward to licking the bowl at the very end. Those are the memories that I will always cherish and hope they remember for years to come :-)
My favorite baking memory is more like an eating memory :) Each holiday my parents neighbor makes fudge, buckeye balls and russian tea cakes – I’ve since started making them for my friends and can’t wait for the holidays so I can have an excuse to make and enjoy these!
Baking Christmas cookies with my Mom!! She would make about a million varieties, and it felt like she was just baking the whole month of December to give beautiful trays of cookies to all our family and friends.
When I was little, my grandma always made her amazing sugar cookies during Christmas. My sister and I would always help her roll the dough and cut tons of characters out with cookie cutters. Then after all was done help frost =)
The one memory that really stands out is baking Halloween cupcakes with my oldest son. I bake a lot, but having him “help” decorate makes it more memorable!!
I used to love baking Christmas cookies with my mom. We would usually bake on the night when CBS was showing Rudolph, Frosty and the Charlie Brown Christmas special. I was mom’s baking helper, and there was nothing better than eating warm fresh cookies while watching our favorite holiday shows.
I don’t really have any memories of baking while growing up but I started baking on my own in college and I can’t wait to make memories with my own kids someday!
My favorite baking memory is making and decorating a birthday cake for my nephews and niece each year.
My favorite baking memory is a series of pre-Christmas baking events where my best friends and I would get together and have a baking extravaganza! We would bake all day – 10 hours straight most times – and invite people over in the evening to sample our wares. I loved baking with someone else. So much fun!
My favorite baking memory will be at christmastime, when my aunt would make her family famous “Cindy” cookies and my mom and I would bake our not-so-famous but oh so delicious peanut butter cookies. I’ll never forget learning to make the criss cross lattice pattern with a fork!
I have been baking pies with my Dad since I was a baby. Every Christmas we would set out to make apple and pumpkin pies! Now that I’m older I am able to teach my Dad a few things about baking and the pies look prettier and prettier every year! I will always have these memories with my Dad close to my heart!
My oldest girl and I bake every holiday time dozens and dozens of cookies to give to family and friends. This year my youngest two (3 year old twins) are old enough to participate so I am hoping we make many more happy memories together!
I loved watching my mother bake cookies with my daughter’s when they were younger. Their favorite cookie was “Grandma’s Molassas Cookie”, which my (then) 3 yr old daughter renamed “Glass-ama Cookies”. We baked them again, in my mother’s memory, for that daughters wedding favors!
I don’t have a ton of memories from growing up…my dad is the Pie Maker in our house but I don’t think we ever helped him. We eat those pecan pies, though! Last year my then 3 year old son “helped” me make Christmas cookies, which was both fun and frustrating, but I’m looking forward to doing it again this year and hopefully starting a tradition.
Making Crunchy Birthday Cookies with my mom…and eating half the dough before we’d bake them. Mmmmmm.
One of favorite memories is from high school: staying awake until 2 in the morning with one of my best friends. We were baking a three-tiered, three-flavor cake that got decorated with pink fondant bows and rested on a huge, porcelain cake plate. So worth it.
When I spent the entire day making cupcakes for my friend’s birthday. Each cupcake was decorated differently, and the cupcakes themselves were strawberry, her favorite type. It was my first time using fondant, and they turned out really great. At the end of the day, I felt really proud of my work, and came away knowing I’d made my friend something she’d always remember.
For some crazy reason, our cassette tape of Fiddler on the Roof became our baking soundtrack when I was a kid. I had never seen the musical or the movie but loved the music and loved even more to bake to it.
My favorite baking memory isn’t so much about the process of baking, but of the after effects. My Grandmother is a wonderful baker and always contributes some tried and true family recipe to any family occasion. She has made these recipes hundreds of times, and each and every pie or cake gets eaten up like there’s no tomorrow. And yet… every time we’re just starting to dig in to her latest labor of love, she starts to try and convince us that this attempt might just be here worst attempt ever. She’s done something different like sift the flour wrong, or added an ingredient at that last minute that should have gone in earlier… and she’s sure this cake or pie isn’t done exactly as it should have been done. We all groan in protest and quickly assure her that nothing is wrong with the confection that is quickly disappearing from our plates. But she presses on and continues to explain why we might all be deluding ourselves. I know that she’s not too serious though because every time this happens I’m pretty sure I can always see that look on her face that every baker gets (80% satisfaction and 20% smugness) as they watch people gleefully scarf down their creations.
My favorite baking memory would be, every year at Christmastime my aunt Evelyn and I would make a carrot cake. I can still remember the smell of the cinnamon, the look of the bright orange shredded carrots, and making the homemade cream cheese frosting! It wasn’t Christmas without our carrot cake! Delish!
I love making hundreds of cookies with my 16 year old daughter. She has been helping me since she was a toddler and we both look forward to our holiday baking every year.
I have wonderful memories of helping my mom make Moravian Sugar cakes and smelling them when they came out of the oven. There was cooked brown sugar and butter that stuck to the round pans and was so good. They are so good. Especially my mom’s recipe. When we were younger we would stand out front on the lawn and sell them to passerby cars going past our house.
My favorite recent memory is baking cookies with my 18 month old son last Christmas. Somehow the powdered sugar for the chocolate crinkles ended up all over the kitchen. We just got down and played in the new “snow” and then he helped clean it up. It was a crazy mess but fun to play and a memory for me.
Baking sugar cookies with the kids!!!
Either first time making cookies with my boyfriend, they weren’t very good and a great time making valentine cookies with my daughter, was fun and delicious :)
We always make fudge and magic cookie bars for Christmas. The treats tray at Christmas time is not complete without these two treats.
My favorite baking memory actually just happened a couple of years ago. My grandmother is getting older and starting to forget things. My mom is one of 7 and all of them have at least 2 children. The entire family got together a couple of weeks before Christmas and spent the day baking all of our favorites. Then everyone had plenty to take home and give away for presents. A great memory of grandma holding court over all of us and a last time for her to pass on her knowledge.
In 1989 the Christmas issue of Better Homes and Gardens there was an article about Holiday Sweets. I tried the creamy caramel recipe and the English toffee recipe. I still have the magazine. The pages 128-129 are spotted and crinkled from the many years i’ve gotten it our to use it.
Christmas wouldn’t be the same without these valuable recipes.
We didn’t live around a lot of my mother’s side of the family, but when we went to visit my grandparents on her side, we would always have the best whole wheat pancakes for breakfast. She would grind the wheat in an old wooden wheat grinder, mix up the batter and make HUGE pancakes that we coated in butter and warm syrup. I think I’ve gotten close to the memory of these pancakes, but I’ve never been able to get them as good as she made them.
Making batches and batches of spritz and sugar cookies at Christmastime with my parents and sisters. We filled tins with an assortment and delievered to our family and neighbors. SO much fun and I continue this tradition 30 years later.
Every year for my friends’ birthdays, I always make them a special cake to celebrate their day!
My favorite baking memory is from a few Christmases ago. My husband and I had only beenarried for a little over a year and couldn’t afford to give everyone we loved a nice gift. So, we decided to bake cookies. We baked sooo many cookies and treats. Our tiny apartment was completely full of cookies. It was a crazy undertaking but we had so much fun doing it together. It’s one of my favorite holiday memories.
My favorite baking memory is another Christmastime memory. Even though we lived in Uganda where it wasn’t always easy to find the ingredients we needed, my Mom, my brother and later my baby sister would bake a huge chocolate cake, carve it into a house and then decorate it with all kinds of great and gaudy decorations-sprinkle snow, licorice eavestroughs, trinket gnomes as elves-you name it it was there! lol!
My grandma was famous for her peanut butter fudge. She had a stroke when I was about six and wasn’t able to do much on her own anymore, but I remember that she would come help my mom and I do the holiday baking and she was able to sit at the stove in her wheelchair and stir the candy (since it needs constant watching), so she felt like she was still doing her holiday baking. I love the memory of the three of us in my mom’s tiny kitchen. I still remember exactly what it feels like.
For Easter this past year, my roommate and her fiance were going to be on their own for the first time, no family or friends (they both had to work). So I made them a coffee cake to have for Easter breakfast, so they’d know people were thinking about them! That’s what baking is all about to me!
Baking cakes with my sweet Mom. She’s such a talented baker and cake decorator. I learned so much from her.
My mom doesn’t like to cook or bake, but every Christmas we made Rocky Road fudge and English Toffee together. It’s definitely one of my favorite memories!
Family Christmas cookie baking.
My favorite memory is the sound of my daughter (I call her my “sous chef”) moving her step stool over to the counter to join me baking. She won’t need her stool much longer but I know that she will continue to bake with me.
My best baking memories are with my grandmother. She has 10 grandkids but each year each one of us would get to spend the night with her and make christmas cookies and decorate them. Now that my grandmother is too old to continue the tradition, I now have my young cousins over to decorate and bake cookies since they were not born when the rest of us were and got that experience with Grandma like us older kids did.
My favorite memory is Thanksgivings/ Christmas at my grandparents house. My Granny, mom, aunt and whomever would get in the kitchen and cook all day. The smells were torture because no one could have any until it was all done!
My favorite baking moment was the first time I baked with both of my girls. They were 3.5 and 18 months. I think they ate more of the batter then actually went in the cake pan. By the end we were all covered in flour, the kitchen was a disaster and the cake didn’t come out very well, but we had so much fun and I’ll always remember it.
My mom makes chocolate chip cookies with pecans every Christmas. She doesn’t make them any other time of the year. To me Christmas isn’t Christmas without my momma’s chocolate chip cookies! I make them for my family the same way just subbing pb chips for pecans!
Coming home every year for Christmas and baking sugar cookies with my Mom. Love getting to spend the time with her—and her sugar cookie recipe is the BEST!
My favorite baking moment was baking over 80 dozen chocolate chip cookies for a client for her wedding. I prepped the dough at my house and then drove down to the rental house and baked the cookies there – it took almost 8 hours of baking but I remember having fun packaging them and thinking about how much her guests would love to have cookies at the end of her amazing wedding!
When I was younger (we’re talking elementary school young!) my mom used to make cookie dough while my sister and I were at school. We always loved forming little cookie balls and then watching them flatten as they cooked. Many an hour was spent crouched by the oven together, watching them bake.
My fav memories are baking at Christmas, especially baking cookies for Santa. The kids make sure we leave them every year and get a huge kick out of it when they wake up the next morning with some missing and a bite out of one of them (done by the hubby). :)
My best memory is baking with my kids. Propping them up on the counter and letting them help ‘dump’ ingredients into the mixing bowl. Licking the bowl was the reward once the cookies were in the oven!
Thanksgiving was always the start of baking season for my mom. Her apple pies are famous with family and friends. My little brother and I would help her toss apple slices in spices, roll and crimp pie crusts, and take samples along the way ;) She doesn’t bake like she used to but I think I’m going to have to put in a pie request when I’m home for Christmas!
My favorite baking memory is baking apple pies with my mom on the last trip she took to NY before she died. It was the most amazing pie she ever made, and she made a million pies in her lifetime. It was a fun trip, there were lots of laughs over that pie.
My favorite memory is baking holiday goodies with my family every Christmas! It’s a tradition I’m carrying on with my own children! On a side note…another memory is the time I made Oatmeal cookies…by myself as a child…who knew there was more than one kind of clove in the cupboard! My cookies ended up with whole cloves…no one has ever let me forget it!
My senior year in high school was tough. I was in a car accident a week before it started, then after the first quarter I got mono. That lead me to be home bound the second quarter which was during the holidays. I had so much fun baking with my mom during that time. It made all my health issues feel like blessings.
My first and most treasured and common baking memory is my mother making us “Bizcochuelo” which is a type of amazing spongecake. She also made/makes us amazing crepes and fritters. Beautiful memories, I love my Mom:)
My favorite baking memory is when my younger sister and I would make Christmas cookies to give to friends and neighbors. It would be an all day, bake and decorate until you couldn’t stand the sight of another cookie sort of day, but having a table full of cookies at the end was always worth it!
My best memories of baking were those when I baked with my grandma as a child. She could really cook and boy could she whip up a sweet potato pie!!!! They would smell so good in the oven and they were delicious. Until this day, I have not been successful with a sweet potato pie as good as hers, but she has left me with a love for baking. :o) now I’m making my own baking memories with my children. :o)
my friends and i started an annual baking day back in college before christmas.. and we just baked a ton…
last year it turned into a cookie exchange and we ended up with a total of over 42 dozen cookies.. for 7girls.. yikes! lol
I bake for my neighbors for Christmas every year. Who doesnt like something sweet on Christmas Eve or Christmas morn? thanks for the giveaway :)