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!
Mine was cooking with my Grandma! I thought she could cook anything!
I loved making gingerbread cookies with my grandmother as a kid. We would roll and cut out literally hundreds of cookies. She would even let me eat the dough (which was something my mom wouldn’t let me do). Now my grandmother has dementia and having a meaningful conversation with her is just not possible so I cherish the memories I have of chatting while we baked together.
My mom and I always made Christmas sand tarts. For whatever reason I cannot get them right on my own, but with her they are perfect! I always love remembering making them with my little sister and she did not know the difference between flour and sugar and dipped her finger in the flour and said “mmmmm so good” even though her face was not saying the same ;)
I love making chocolate chip cookies. They are such a classic and the first thing i remember baking. I’ve made them for so many years that I have my favorite recipe committed to memory.
When my Granny used to get the mixer out I knew it was gonna be a special day !I loved going to Granny’s for the weekend because we would always make something awesome,from turnovers to homemade spaghetti.Whenever I look at my Granny’s cookbook my heart is full with the memories of her!
I love visiting my husband’s family for Christmas because they are serious cookie decorators. My hubby has 4 brothers and so among the usual Christmas cookie shapes there are also a few ninjas, vampires, zombies (etc.), which results in a hilarious cookie combination.
I’m hosting his family this year and I can’t wait to see what crazy things they come up with. I need to keep my eye out for some unique cookie cutters. Can’t wait!
I like to make pies for Thanksgiving and take to whose ever home we are going to. My husband is pretty picky about pies so it is just easier for me to make them. This year my daughter is finally old enough to actually help.
Baking Christmas cookies with my mom!
My favorite baking memory would be how at christmas my family would always bake peppernut cookies (tiny crunchy round gingery cookies). We would roll the dough out into long skinny snakes and then cut nickle sized balls and place them on baking sheets. It was a lot of work but we’d have our fav Christmas album playing and would sing as we went. Yum yum yum!
I loved baking with my sister whenever she was in town. It was pretty much the only language we had in common. Our most recent adventure has been rainbow cupcakes with cloud frosting! It was amazing.
My favorite baking memory? Definitely frosting & decorating sugar cookies during the holidays. I always liked the Halloween ones better (who wouldn’t prefer shoestring licorice & candy corn decorations over sprinkles?!) but my dad made frosting Christmas cookies much more, um, interesting!
First I’d like to say how timely your grandmother’s pecan pie recipe is because I just bought a mini pie pan over the weekend. And I was looking for a good pecan pie recipe!
A few months ago a group of friends of mine got together and hosted a bake sale during the Great American Bake Sale weekend for Share Our Strength. I had so much fun the night before cranking out slutty brownies (whatsgabycooking.com), cupcakes, and pies. It was so neat to see all the different things we made big (a texas sheet cake) and small (mini cookies). We all enjoyed seeing people come over to our table and looking over all the sweets, while trying to decide what to buy. The best part was we raised over $500 in two days. That’s so far my best baking memory. There’s nothing better than sweets and friends!
My favorite baking memory is when my grandma taught me how to bake bread when I was a young girl. Very special. :)
Ever since my daughter was born, we have always set aside the first weekend in December to do a “Bartlett Bake-Off.” When my daughter was old enough to begin helping in the kitchen, we put her to work on decorating the cookies while we finished up the other items. She would lick the spatula clean between cookies leaving an entire batch of cookies all for her, nonetheless.
My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas cookies with my mom every year for as long as I can remember. It is something I love to do and look forward to every year during the holidays! We pick a Saturday in December, blast the Christmas music, and bake all day!
Making m&m cookies with my mom at Christmas!
My favorite baking memory is every Thanksgiving when my mom and I make pumpkin pies together while watching the parade!
The first baking memory to pop in my head was of my oldest son and I (he is now 28!), making pies. He was only four, was standing on a chair at the kitchen counter “helping” roll the dough..covered from head to toe with flour! Too sweet!
As a child I would make cookies with my momma. By the time I was in junior high, she was letting me bake by myself–as long as she was home to make sure I didn’t burn the house down!
When I had a daughter of my own, she was in the kitchen with me from the time she was born. When she was four, I had started back to college to finish my degree. During the week of spring break we got to spend the whole week together, no babysitter–no books, so one day we made chocolate chip cookies together. She was a big help. After all the cookies were baked and I was finishing up washing the dishes, this four-year-old said to me, “We had fun today. Mom, you’d be just like my sister if you didn’t make me clean my room!”
Yes, sweetheart, I guess I would…
As a child, I loved watching Julia Child and tried my best to mimic her techniques and recipes, some attempts were successful, some not so much. Well now I have a 3 year old daughter and she loves being in the kitchen. So now I’m creating baking memories with her, each week we bake at least 2-3 desserts, her favorite is making cookies, which are my favorite too :)
my girlfriend and I take turns coming up with a cupcake idea and then we bake and decorate it
my favorite baking memory was going to my grandmother’s house and making pies and making treatsies with the left over pie dough (pie dough, butter, cinnamon and sugar all rolled up and sliced into cookies)
A few months ago, my mom showed me how to bake castella! It was wonderful.
Baking Christmas cookies with my daughter every year! The mess was always worth the time together!
That’s such a great family tradition! In my family we make a special cookie every year at Christmas. It brings me so much comfort to bake it in my home every year.
my mom taught me to make pecan pie using the pecans that grew from the tree in our yard. i loved it then, and i love it now. one day (hopefully) i will teach my daughter :)
My favorite baking memory is baking all sorts of Christmas cookies with my mom and sister. It would take us a couple of days to make the dough, refrigerate it and roll it out the next day to bake and decorate. We would have fun decorating the the traditional trees, snowmen and reindeer and then have fun decorating them as crazy as we could! No matter what, they were always so delicious to eat!
I am the baker of the family and come the holidays I go into full mode. I have slowly let my daughter help with the baking, she is 7, I’m hoping to make memories for her to share with her children. There wasn’t a lot of baking growing up, we store bought our baked goods.
I’m making new baking memories with my daughter. She’s just really starting to enjoy helping me in the kitchen and I’m loving every minute of it!
Our holiday traditions is to bake and decorate sugar cookies at Christmas. Nothing smells better than pulling a batch of freshly baked sugar cookies out of the oven!
I usually turn my nose up at mixes, but one of my favorite memories is mixing up a big batch of sugar cookies with my little brother and sister, and spending Christmas afternoon baking and decorating those sugar cookies… and then eating them all up after!
My favorite baking memory is making the very first cake with my daughter (she turns 3 this week) <3
When my girls were little we always made cut-out sugar cookies for every season.
My mom has hosted a cookie exchange for well over 35 years. Everyone brings 5 dozen of their own cookies to exchange and my mom and I make sugar cookies the day before for everyone to decorate the night of the party while munching on apps and drinking wine. It went from my mom’s tradition (with all of her friends) to my tradition since it is mostly all of my friend in attendance now.
We think of baking as pastry-type baking, but a tradition that my family has is baking Green Bean Bundles at all major holidays! Before any holiday, my three children, all young adults now, say, “We ARE having Green Bean Bundles, aren’t we?” As much as I like to bake sweets, baking Green Bean Bundles is a real tradition in my home!
My favorite baking memory is making pepperoni rolls with my husband. We made big rolls, little twists, and tried to fancy it up by baking squares. It was just a great time to experiment with lots of different shapes and then, of course, eating them all afterwards.
My memory is very similiar to yours, my Nanny made a mean pecan pie. Now my Dad continues on the tradition. It started years ago with him baking a few for the girls at work and ballooned from there. He makes close to 100 a year now! and he loves every minute of it
Making marshmallows in our little house on Christmas Eve.
I remember baking with my father. Anything he would make I would make a mini version of the same thing. If he would make his famous homemade banana pudding, so would I. When he made pizza dough from scratch I would always help him, and then tear a piece off for my mini version. the mini version of what he baked was my chance to experiment with flavor combinations. He taught me never to be afraid to not follow the recipe exactly. He said certain things are needed but others can be replaced. Watching him bake and prepare everything form scratch, taught me the value of patience.
We never really baked anything from a box, but when we did, we made it our own.
I love baking and decorating sugar cookies with my daughter, she comes up with the best designs (well as best as a 3 year old can anyway) :)
I loved baking cookies with either Grandma and Mom! They always welcomed the help and we usually got to share the beaters afterwards. Grandma’s cookie jar was always full!
I always remember Mom making the turkey in our wood stove. We didn’t have a regular oven so she didn’t have a choice. It was hot all day in the house cooking that thing. I remember her taking it out to baste it. Maybe that’s what made Thanksgiving so special to me : )
It’s gotta be making “cookie cutter cookies” during the holidays with my mom, sister and aunt. It was great to have tins and tins of cookies around that time of year!
My grandma taught me to make Brown Bag Apple Pie, which actually bakes in a brown bag. It’s become the most traditional dessert in my family – and every time I smell that sweet apple pie in the oven, it reminds me of her.
Last summer, my 14-year-old son taught his 8-year-old cousin how to make chocolate chip cookie dough. (I was not allowed to help, as he has declared he is the chocolate chip cookie maker in our home.) It was SO sweet listening to him patiently guide her through each step, giving her baking tips, and telling her what a great job she was doing. They created one giant cookie and decorated it for my husband’s birthday. The memory still makes me smile.
I have lots of baking memories with my mom. She is amazing and has taught me so much. A recent memory with her is when I volunteered both of us to make all the cupcakes for my cousin’s wedding. It was quite the adventure but everything turned out perfectly. My mom is the best and I’m so excited to pass her baking wisdom on to my own two daughters!
I remember my grandmother teaching me how to make chocolate rugelach on her brown kitchen table. Plus she always made a birthday cake in the number of the age we were, and would wait till we got there to make her famous chocolate glaze and decorate it with smarties around the edges…
I use to spend summers at my grandmother’s in chicago. One of my favorite baking memories was one time, when I was probably 10 or 11, I was proud to share with her my “recipe” for peach pie – I took a big can of cling peaches (syrup and all), add some cornstarch and simmer on the stove until thickened, pour into a frozen crust, and bake.
Ever the supporter, she proclaimed it the best pie ever.
I think I’d have to say my favorite baking memory was when I was little I always used to bake cookies with my mom during the holidays. She used to throw there huge Christmas parties and would start making cookies a few months in advance and just freeze them. We made so many different kinds of cookies together and I absolutely enjoyed that time I spent with her :)
My dad is a baker of over 60 years. We baked all the time but my favorite memory is watching him come home with that little pink box full of baked good for me and my sister and brothers, it was the best. I bake all the time now and Dad always has tips and suggestions!
my favorite, yet bittersweet baking memory: I got em! My grandmother (memaw) Margaret’s recipes. All of them. Church recipe books, yellowed index cards, pans, and yes even her cast iron skillet. Ive never baked before but who cares – I GOT EM!!
Red Velvet Cake – mmmm Memaw’s specialty. Strained to read her handwriting, making sure each ingredient was THE ingredient she used, no matter what the journey entailed…
Umm. I forgot to add the baking soda. D’oh!
My beloved Dad’s butterhorn rolls, which he learned how to make from his Mom. They are the cornerstone of every holiday, and I have fond memories of helping him spread the butter on dough early Christmas morning, Thanksgiving morning, and Easter morning. I’ve yet to make them myself, but my Dad is only 54, so I’d better have a good 20-30 more years of him making them before I have to worry about that!
My favorite baking memory from when I was very young, is sitting at the kitchen table with both of my brothers and rolling the struffoli dough into little balls for my mom. My mom certainly enjoyed the help and it kept us busy for a good period of time!!!
I used to LOVE sitting on the countertop, watching my mom mix up, well, anything! She’d get out her little stand mixer, and I’d climb up and watch all the ingredients get added and mixed together. She passed on her love of baking to me, and now my girls love to watch and help. :)
I have been making candy/fudge with my mom to give away as Christmas gifts for the past 20 years (or more). It is a fun time for us to spend time together and to share the joy of baking with others.
I used to love to watch my mom bake apple pie. She would peel the apples in one long curling strip of peel. I’d steal nibbles of that as well as nibbles of leftover pie dough. I still try to get my apples peeled in one long strip like she did.
Baking bread with my dad,the smell of yeast still brings me back to those days.
WOW! This is that exact same pecan pie recipe my Mom-in-law gave me when I married her son about 37 yrs ago! My fav memory is my own Mother being in the kitchen starting about Nov.starting her Austrian/Hungarian goodies! (Mmmm, like Rum Balls and Barna Linzi) I’m really kicking myself for not paying more attention at the time since she was an expert baker and cook from the “old country”! I especially remember (drooling) and miss her Apple Strudel! I’d come home from school and she’d be stretching the dough over our old 50’s era kitchen table over her snow-white special tablecloth! She even sprinkled a little suger under the strudel so it would caramelize for me! Oooooo….how I miss it now! Thank you for the recipe for the pecan pie though – my handwritten copy is looking pretty sad and now I have a nice printed copy to keep!
My favorite baking memory is baking around fall as well. I love making pumpkin bread for my family, and my mom and I use to make all sorts of goodies to give away to our friends and family. English toffee was one of my favorites to make, and anything with marshmallows!!
My mom, aunt and grandma used to get together before Christmas and spend the whole day making Christmas cookies. As kids, we’d never know until we got home from school and the whole place smelled like cookies, and we got to help intead of doing our homework.
My mom taught me how to cook and bake when I was really small. I’m so glad she did! She passed away three years ago, and I keep her favorite recipe “card” on my kitchen windowsill…Red Velvet Cake. Her recipe was a little different from most, and everyone always loved it! She used Nestle Quick instead of cocoa, and every time we would make it, I would ask her if that’s what she REALLY meant to write down. She would always tell me, “YES, that’s what I meant!” So, I still make it that way today, and everyone still loves it…of course, not as much as her’s though! I have started making new baking memories with my kids now. I always share stories from mine and “Grandma Kay’s” baking moments. They love hearing all about them! :)
I love baking with my kids. They are 3 & almost 7. Cake pops is the 3 years olds most favorite thing in the whole world. We love to bake for charity events too! This would be a GREAT birthday present for me!
My favorite baking memory(ies) is with my Grandma on the farm. She always had fresh baked goods on the counter, and all summer long and almost every day after school I was in the kitchen right her side. I watched and learned and now continue to use her same recipes in my kitchen, 3 years now after she passed. My ultimate favorite recipe of hers we used to make together is Pumpkin Pie.
My two children (4 and 2) and I just made mini strawberry pies. They had so much fun stiring the strawberries, stretching the dough and placing them in the muffin tins. They also loved the strussel topping we put on top- it was funny to listen to my daughter (4) instructing my son (2) what the perfect amount of pie to struessel topping ratio was!
Snowball cookies! Every year my mother, my sister and I would bake snowball cookies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cookies rolled in powder sugar and m&m cookies. It would take us all day to bake them. After that we would give them out to friends and family but I remember keeping the best for us!
My favorite baking memory is from my childhood when my mom, sister, and I would bake cookies on Christmas Eve for Santa. We would have to make sure to set some aside so that we didn’t eat all of Santa’s cookies.
My favorite cooking memory so far was a friendly cooking competition between college students last year, with each team of three or four students given a secret ingredient to use as their dish, and our team won with my idea of a green bean cheesecake. :)
There has always been lots of baking in our house. I can’t remember a time that specifically sticks in my head becasue my mom and I were always cooking up something. I love that I have memories with her and can actually cook becasue of her.
My favorite memory is baking with my Grandma. She taught me so much and it has developed into a love for baking. Her zucchini bread recipe has got to be my favorite! A few years ago she suffered a stroke and now is unable to walk or use on of her arms. So I’m thankful for the memories we have made, and now I bring her goodies to enjoy! :)
Making a Gingerbread house with my mom each year around Christmas time. Last year my niece joined us and this year my other niece will join us and continue to make baking memories for them.
Best memories for me are my Mom baking cookies(especially when I’d walk in the door after school.)”Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven!” We also made made cookies together at Christmastime. One holiday, Christmas carolers sang on our front porch and we had warm cookies to give them when they were done.
Every year my family gets together to bake and decorate sugar cookies to give as gifts. It’s a big mess, and it takes forever, but we always have fun doing it. All the “kids” are grown now, but this year my 3 year old niece will participate and I’m really looking forward to it!
First thought of a baking memory is my grandma’s sugar cookies! I remember her making them and my mom! My Mom made them every holiday! I carry on this same tradition. I would help roll them out, cut with cookie cutter, place on cookie sheet, wait for them to cool, frost and you must top with sprinkles!!!! They are soft and just melt in your mouth! My kids know every holiday that they will be around and I have my first 2 grandkids on the way, and cannot wait to make sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles every holiday!
Baking at Christmas time brings back wonderful memories. We would bake all kinds of cookies, fudge, divinity, and toffee and give out to all of our friends. We would also bake sugar cookies and have a cookie decorating party. I think that the adults enjoyed the decorating more than the kids!
My favorite baking memory is a fairly recent one, as my 2 sons are 16 months and almost 4. But when my oldest was about 2, we were making chocolate chip cookies. He was standing on a step stool to reach the counter, wearing a cute pink apron from my childhood. He was busy quality checking the chocolate chips and helping dump all the ingredients in the mixer bowl. My husband took a picture of us baking, and I realized my son was wearing his apron, a cute t-shirt and an adorable orange cloth diaper, but no pants. :) And we had a blast! We decided if you don’t wear pants, they can’t get dirty. My boys adore baking with me,and my oldest is already a pro at identifying all the ingredients, bringing them from the pantry, and scooping/measuring/leveling! I can’t wait to do holiday baking with both my little helpers!
There are too many to pick just one. I had a great time making a giant halloween/casino/birthday cake for my friends birthday. It had a skull on top and when you cut into it, it was filled with bloody “grenadine” and gummy worms. It was great fun. And this mixer would make is so much easier!
One of my favorite moments is when I’m in the middle of baking and my girls (mainly the 3 year old) want to lick mixer attachments and spatulas. It doesn’t have to be anything good like chocolate or even sweet, they want those no matter what. And it gets even cutter when their faces have chocolate or cream all over (literally) them at the very end.
My favorite cooking memory is of making homemade oreos. I used to make them all the time and they were my favorite cookie (I still do love them, though I can no longer email them since I am on a gluten free diet). But what makes the memory is that I made some several years ago to give to a friend on his birthday. Those cookies ended up being the start of our courtship and that friend is now my wonderful husband. :)
My favorite baking memory is making cookies with my mom and sisters as a child at Christmastime. We always made raspberry jam thumbprints and frosted shortbread cookies. We looked forward to it every year–so fun to spend time together in the kitchen!
My favorite baking memory is two days before Christmas last year, when my sister-in-law and I had planned to bake for Christmas. My good friend April then showed up because she had some last minute baking to do as well, and her husband came to hang out with my husband. And then my two sisters and brother-in-law came because they just wanted to hang out. Everyone in the house having a good time was so wonderful. It’s a great memory.
Hello, baking world! To start with, my favorite baking memory has a timeline rather than just a moment. Just this past Saturday, I was feeling under the weather. I have been under a lot of stress lately. I decided instead of buying into the conventional cupcake experience and buying them right out of the Bakery section at my local grocery store, that I would get the whole exciting and satisfying experience of baking them myself. I found a mixing pack of mint chocolate chip icing mix and a regular base icing. I got the rest of my ingredients and went home with a baking fire in my belly. I was ready to create my andes mint chocolate cupcakes. While I was mixing the devils food batter I remembered that my mom only let me mix the batter for the baking when I asked to help. I guess it’s because she was a single mom and was too tired after working two jobs sometimes three to mix the batter by hand. Smooth, mom! As I my devils food box instructions it read, mixing it hand held? 450 strokes. I was not excited about this part. I laughed and told my husband, Josh, that I wanted to get this exact Mixer for Christmas. He said “maybe”, as I used the same trick my mother pulled on me. “Honey, you said you wanted to help me bake, well please stir the batter” He willing did this. Just as I did as a kid. And stir them he did. There were no lumps in that batter. I laugh as I think about it all. And they were delicious. I invited a couple of our friends over specifically for the cupcakes. My friends made a fuss over them and decided to take some home. Baking has been passed down in my family, from a little secret ingredient here and there, to an individual creative experience. Either way, hand mixing or mixing in a convenient and Beautiful Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, it will be a delicious ending to a wonderful baking memory.
my favorite memory is baking christmas cookies with my mom and sister. we would bake things we never made other then christmas time. i would love to have this mixer to make memories with my daughter. i now bake and give baskets to neighbors and friends over the holidays
I don’t know that I have a specific baking memory, but I love to bake zucchini bread. It’s the only recipe in my arsenal that I don’t share with people. It was my great-grandmother’s recipe, and a “family secret.” When I bake it, I remember her (she died when I was eight), my grandmother, and I think of my mom, and I usually call her to talk. I hope that one day my daughters will have special memories/feelings associated with baking zucchini bread, too.
My mom didn’t do a lot of baking, but Granny did! Biscuits, peanut butter cookies and pound cakes were the best! She always had me help her and they were some of my favorite times!
When my girls were young, we could cook or bake something together at least once a month. I always had to pick recipes with at least 2 eggs in it because that was the part they both wanted to do the most. I was always a little touch and go and we had more than one cake with a little eggshell in it. But, they both eventually got the hang of it and do a pretty good job of it now!
I have fond memories of winter time cookie baking with my sons. One year, we made mitten shaped cut out cookies and decorated them with all kinds of colored frostings, sprays and sprinkles! Talk about fun! :)
When my oldest son was little, he would often ask to “scoop-dump” with me. He’d scoop the flour and then dump it into the bowl. (Well, most of it made it into the bowl and some would end up all over the both of us). I have precious memories of baking with him.
I was still a novice cook and baking some zucchini bread for my mom to have on hand while family was visiting. I was making a double batch with nothing more than a handheld grater to grate ALL that zucchini. I was exhausted by the time I put everything in the loaf pans. Something seemed odd about the batter (I only knew because i had made it before), but I carried on and put the loafs in the oven. When I noticed all the sugar still measured out on the counter. I crumbled onto the kitchen floor and cried from exhaustion and disappointment. And now I laugh at myself for doing so!
My beautiful mother taught me how to bake. My favorite memory is around the holidays, after baking pies, mom would use the extra pie dough to make cinnamon roll ups. She is now passed on but every time I bake, I know I am channeling her :).
My favorite memory is of my daughters and I baking the “Death By Chocolate” cake together. They were 9 and 11 at the time. We had such a blast and by the time we finished my kitchen was a disaster! Not to mention our stomachs. We laughed and ate so much chololate during the making, licking fingers, beaters,and bowls, that by the time we finished the cake we couldn’t eat it. But we had a blast making it. Of course we had to take a trip to Colonial Williamsburg and the Trellis Resturant so we could actually taste the finished product.
My favorite baking memory is baking with my little boy. He loves to help me bake cookies. When he was about two we both had on aprons his black — mine red. I can still picture him clear as day standing up on the chair in front of the mixing bowl with his apron covered in flour. Such a sweet memory.
I loved making cookies with my mom!
My favorite baking memory is with my grandmother. Every Christmas we would make her amazing cut out sugar cookies together. I have so many wonderful memories of picking through the numerous cookie cutters and decorating dozens of cookies while listening to Christmas music. I still haven’t mastered the recipe quite like she did….I think it was just her love that made them SO darn good and turn out perfect every time :)
My mom was a queen in the kitchen. She made everything from scratch you could imagine and was so creative. I got to be her baking assistant and from a young age, I would sit by her side and follow her instructions for making complicated Greek pastries or Traditional English Crumbles. She was also a great cake decorater and our birthday parties were the envy of all. Having inherited all her kitchen excellence, I now get to be the diva of baking and even though we live thousands of miles apart, we still share all our recipes and tips. My favorite memory is when she and I decorated my cousin’s wedding cake last year with all our shared experience and creativity.
My favorite memory is the Thanksgiving night. We had our BIG meal in the afternoon and I thought “what do we do at night”? I thought that we could do a craft that night – we would make gingerbread houses for the holiday. I prebaked all the parts, bought the candies, made the royal icing and covered the dining room table. We had so much fun that night and the kids all had something to bring home to their homes.
I loved this post. Brought a tear to my eye. My favorite holiday cooking memory is getting to together each year with my mom and sister and baking Christmas cookies together all day long. We always make sure to make our favorites and a couple new recipes, too.
My daughter wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. It was her first time doing it by herself. So I guided her through by telling her next steps. We had the mixer running and I said one egg. Well she crackes it on the side of the bowl , her face was hilarious as she watched that egg shell slide right into the bowl. We both burst out laughing. Luckiely we stop the mixer fished out all the big chunks of shell and finished making cookies. We talk about it to this day.
My favorite baking memory is making Portuguese sweet bread with my Avo. She would give me my own dough to make my own creation, but I was guilty of eating the dough before it made it to the oven!
When my daughter was 2 years old we began the tradition of picking pumpkins at her school’s pumpkin patch. Every year we pick a few small ones for scratch pies and a few for carving.
We have been making pies for 3 years now and it has been a joy to watch her scrape the pumpkin, add the ingedients, use the mixer and watch them bake. She is so proud of her pies and even has a few requests from family to bake them pies in the fall.
I can’t wait for her to pass this tradition on to her family one day…
I never baked growing up, all of our meals were made on the stovetop and we rarely had sweets.
My favorite baking memories are happening now, when I’m baking with my 3 year old daughter and 8 year old niece. They always want to help and get so excited after each step!
I have memories of Thanksgiving of when I was a kid, where I would make all the pies – like 7 of them for just 12 of us! I loved it.
Every Christmas I’d make Russian fried dough, Chrusciki, with my grandmother and great-grandmother. Memories!
http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/recipestepbyst2/ss/chrusciki.htm
Every Christmas, all 10 of us kids would help Mom bake cookies. My favorite ones were a cream cheese cookie. They were molded or shaped into various Christmas symbols. On the cover of the recipe booklet, these cookies were tinted green and shaped into the word “Joy”. Because of that, we always called them “joy cookies”. We loved those cookies and would beg Mom to make “joy cookies” year round. Now I make them with my 6 kids at Christmastime, and sometimes when it’s nowhere near Christmas. :)
My favorite baking memory is making cookies and watching my sweet children lick the batter off the beaters. My son is 28 and still does that when he’s here.
I love making Christmas candy with friends during the holiday season. We laugh so much it makes the candy taste even better.
I so enjoyed baking with my grandmother on Sunday afternoon’s once church and lunch were done. We would spend all afternoon in the kitchen laughing and baking. Unfortunately all her recipes were lost in a house fire and I so wish I had them now that she’s passed away.
I’ve started memories with my girls and the one that stands out the most is baking chocolate cookies with my youngest daughter. She was helping and tasting, and then she had a face full of chocolate to which she argued she did not and at that moment I took the cutest pictue of her. I will always have that adorable 5 year old image of her no matter how old she is.
I would have to say it was the time my friends visited me in Boston and we baked red velvet cupcakes from scratch. We got red batter everywhere and had a blast laughing and cleaning everything up. And the cupcakes were amazing!
My favorite memories are my grandma teaching me to make peanut butter cookies. We used the recipe so many times that the cookbook automatically falls open to that page as soon as you take it out.
My favorite memory is baking pumpkin pies and christmas cookies with my Grandma. She’s getting older now, but she still bakes a pie for me if I’m going to be in town for the holidays.
The one that always sticks out to me is my cousin and I “baking” a wedding cake for my mom and step dad in my easy bake oven when we were kids.
The first time I made Christmas sugar cookies with my 2 year old daughter. She had such fun “painting” the frosting on the cookies!
Spending time with my mom!
My best memory is from Christmas season! My mom and I used to bake panettone each year for the whole family!
My favorite memory is making sweets with my mother, sisters, and cousin’s wives during the holidays!
I grew up baking Christmas cookies with my brothers and still have fond memories of doing that!
My Yiayia was known as an exceptional cook and baker, and had her repertoire of cookies for Christmas, Greek and otherwise. She was baking past 100 years old, and was a force to be reckoned with! Some of the cookies were labor intensive and the dough could be finicky. I have taken on the mantle in the family of baking her treats, and one Christmas before she passed, she praised my cookies. It meant so much to me, and made me very proud.
I remember baking bread with my grandma! This was before mixers so we did everything by hand! Those are so great memories =)
My first baking experience, I was making brownies. I added too much butter and water into the mix because I did not have a measuring cup. Knowing that when mixing brownie the end result should be thick. To fix my mistake I added flour I mean a lot of flour! Yes, I may have fixed the consistency, but I later found out the TASTE was bad! I was tortured for my browine baking. LOL!
My favorite baking moment was when my grandmother was still with us and we made fresh baked donuts for breakfast in her home in Alabama. We left to change clothes and came back to find that every single one had been devoured by my dad!
Sneaking delicious globs of creamed butter and sugar while watching my mother make dried fruit butter cakes for my dad
My earliest baking memories are of baking Toll House chocolate chip cookies with my mom and sister, standing on the kitchen chairs to reach the Kitchen Aid! My favorite memories are baking dozens and dozens and dozens of cookies for Christmas and for the cookie table at my wedding.
Every Christmas, my mom baked countless batches of a variety of holiday cookies, including peppermint patties. It was wonderful to help decorate the cookies and taste the warm ones as they came out of the oven! I now look forward each year to baking my own Christmas cookies.
Making Buckeyes with my Ohio-born parents. Every single year.
Helping my aunt bake Christmas cookies when I was a little kid – always by hand! My grandfather was a baker and while I didn’t get a chance to know him, she passed down his love of baking to me.
My favorite baking memories are all of the times I’ve baked with my kids. I love that they share in my love of baking and it’s fun to see their creative ideas when it comes to decorating :)
Haha maybe not my favorite, but most vivid when I tried to make blueberry slushies with my brothers! :D That was a long time ago…Love the giveaway and pies! Thanks!
Making pecan brittle with my mother and grandmother.
My husband and I laugh that I should never attempt bread. I have a bread machine, but even I could ruin that! I haven’t used the machine in about 10 years, because every loaf I did came out like one of the bricks on our house!
My favorite is baking cupcakes with my son when he was little. I miss that baby!! At 16 now, I don’t think he would help as much…ha!
I used to LOVE baking trays and trays for Christmas cookies with my Mom and sisters! Then we would package them up, and deliver them to our neighbors along with a few Christmas carols!
One of my favorite baking memories is when my mom and I would be getting ready for our Thanksgiving weekend car trip to visit family. Oven-baked Chex Mix was a painstaking process but the warm smell of the seasoning in the kitchen always brings me back.
I have so many memories,but if I had to choose it would be last years. My parents have 16 grandchildren and during the kids Christmas vacation they all came over to my house to do some holiday baking. Well, my husband didn’t know my nieces and nephews were coming over. Anyways , there was like 20 people in my kitchen baking up a storm. We had to much fun. There was flour and sprinkles everywhere. Well, my husband came home and saw the huge mess in the kitchen we made. He’s a clean freak so of course he was not to happy. He calls me to the other room to tell me off. Whatever to that! I didn’t care what he said it was so worth it. Seeing my nieces and nephews and all my sisters together and just being happy and not worrying about anything was priceless.
My favorite baking experience was just this last Holiday season! My friend had surprised me with a Kitchen Aid and I was dying to use it. Well, my then 8 and 11 year old girls wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. So that is the first ever thing we made with my new Kitchen Aid…..now my little one is now queen of MY Kitchen Aid!! I got some great pictures of them and will enjoy that moment forever!! To win another one would be a dream come true since I’m expanding my kitchen for my 40th birthday this year!!!! Thank you for the change to win one!!
My favorite baking memory is renewed every year. My mom and I have a tradition of making some Filipino cookies called Polvoron (a type of short bread cookie). I look forward to this every year because we always have fun doing it. It is a very laborous (and sometimes painful) process, but its always fun. It is no easy task because we make at least 10-15 recipies (about 1000 cookies) every year plus packaging the cookie and boxing them up for family. We end up with really painful hands from molding the cookie but it is well worth it when we see our whole family enjoy their own box. Our christmases are not complete without these cookies. One year we did not make any, everyone was asking for them and we learned from then that we needed to continue this tradition. My boyfriend is now also involved in the process so I know we will be able to continue this holiday tradition for years and years to come (hopefully generations ahead too).
Baking holiday cookies with my mom every year. In particular, the year we used anything we could find in the kitchen that would work as a cooling rack :)
One of my favorite memories was when my mom and I baked blonde brownies (the family recipe) and enjoyed them while watching Father of the Bride together. This was about a week before I got married so it was special to have that moment together!
My Mom went crazy baking at Christmastime. It was really the only time during the year in which she did it. She would always make a ton of fudge and my favortie part was sneaking bites when all was said and done!
My favorite baking memory is of my husband baking pinwheel Christmas cookies at our old house in San Diego. We had to relocate, and he still bakes them every holiday season, but it’s our old kitchen with the wonderful views and the recipes we learned there that I hold dear to my heart.
My memory is me and my grandma baking pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She also made peanut butter cookies for everyone’s birthday. I loved helping her make them. Her receipe is hanging in my kitchen.
I loved baking with my mom when I was growing up – sugar cookies we got to decorate, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and best of all making brownies so I could lick the bowl clean. To this day I still love making brownies just so I can lick the bowl :)
So many memories baking. My favorite is my great grandmother. She use to have this BIG bowl and when she got that out, you knew she was making cookies! It is grandma’s cookie bowl. When she passed the bowl got passed down to my mother who continues to make cookie memories with that big bowl with the roses printed on it. :) I hope that bowl will end up in my kitchen one day too. and my daughters. It is still as beautiful as my great grandmother. Thanks so much for the giveaways! And I am so craving pecan pie now!!
my favorite baking memories are the ones I am making now with my three young children :) I try to bake at least once every other week with them.
they love making cookies, muffins and cupcakes.
My favorite baking memory has to be making pecan pies with my great grandmother. She was a wonderful baker and what made it even better was the fact that she didn’t use recipes. It was all by memory.
I’ll always remember making Christmas cut-out cookies from my family’s sour cream cookie recipe. It’s always a process, but if I don’t have them every year, I go a little crazy :)
My favorite baking memory is at Christmas time making Italian “honey bows” with my mom. The recipe comes from my Aunt and we make them every year. Love the way it makes the house smell! Thanks for the giveaway :)
When my mom and I make empanadas for Christmas or New Years stuffed with pineapple and coconut, yummmmy
My favorite baking memory is making a cactus cake (for my own birthday!) out of Collette’s Cakes by Collette Peters. My mom and I saw the book in Barnes & Noble and got so excited about making cakes, that we bought it right away. That cake was very beloved by me and my friends.
I loved making butterfly cookies with my Nana as a child.
I loved baking Christmas cookies with my mom and my sisters, then making up variety plates and giving them to neighbors.
My grandmother always makes sugar cookies for the holidays and going over to help her decorate them (and spend the night) was always one of the high points of the year. When I was a little older, we also made bunny bread. It was always pretty obvious which ones were mine, they were the mutant bunnies.
But probably my favorite baking memory was going over and learning how to make the almond cookies from a recipe that had been handed down through the family. As near as I can tell, the recipe came over from Germany with the family, since my great-grandmother called it “mandelkuchen.” They’re my favorite cookies. My grandmother decided when I was in college that it was time I learned how to make them, so I went over to her house when I was home during the holidays. Years later, I have yet to be entrusted with my own copy of the recipe, but they’re still the best cookies. I look forward to them every year.
I remember baking chocolate chip cookies with my sister when I was small. Those were some of the first cookies I learned how to make and they are still my favorite cookie to make to this day. I used to pretend I was on a cooking show and put together little cooking demos in the kitchen. I have always loved baking, especially with my family.
My favorite memories baking have been a yearly tradition of baking all kinds of pies, apple, squash, pumpkin and pecan for Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving we’d move on to Christmas cookies and goodies. She’s the one who taught me to bake and even now that I’m 25 and living in my own apartment I still go home to carry on the tradition of baking all those holiday treats!
My best friend and I would always bake shortbread cookies around Christmas time with her mom! We would have the best time decorating them since we could throw sprinkles around on our little cookie masterpieces!
I love baking with my mom more than anything, but my favorite baking memories are when my girlfriends from college get together at Christmas everyyear at Christmas and bake. We always make time in spite of our busy schedules and one night we catch up on old times and make lots of great treats for our wonderful families.
my favorite baking memory is learning how to make asian speciality breads with my grandma. she always amazed me in how she was able to make the dough a perfect consistency without ever using measuring cups!
I make a lot of peanut brittle for people & everyone loves it!
My favorite baking memory is one of many watching my grandmother roll out dough for a pie or cracking eggs for one of her favorite sweet recipes. She got me interested in baking and, while I have my grandfather to blame for my sweet tooth, I’ll never forget how she always included me in the baking process and let me lick the batter off the beaters.
My favorite memories are of my mom making homemade pies and cookies. I would sit and watch her, occasionally she would let me help. My favorite part was using the sifter contraption she had and when she would let me make the fluted edge on the pie crust. And every kids favorite thing to do, lick the beaters and bowl! I learned so much from her. I think every parent should teach their kids to bake or cook if they can. Not only is it fun for them and their proud of their accomplishment, but it creates a memory they will never forget!
My favorite memory is making chocolate and lemon meringue pies with my mom. She made them for all the Christmas parties we would go to. Once they were done she’d leave them on our back porch to cool down. It always smelled wonderful.
I love making shortbread cookies at Christmas time! It’s a tradition my dad started after a trip to Scotland and I’ve kept it up with my own family!
Baking banana bread with my 2 young daughters. Sweet aroma, sweet memories. 30 years later and tragically, I only have 1 daughter now, so half the memories are just that–memories. Life goes on. Gratefully, I have a grandson now, to make new memories with.
My mom’s birthday is coming up and I couldn’t think of a good gift so I decided to bake something for her. But what? Then I remembered my Great Aunt Mary’s apple cake. I dug around a bit with my fingers crossed and finally found the recipe. Scrap of paper, handwritten list of ingredients with no instructions! I am determined, however, and will figure it out. Should be interesting!
I always remember baking with my dad! We would make cakes and breads and always try new recipes! He has inspired me to bake to this day
My favoite baking memory was when my mom would bake fresh sourdough bread. Eating those wonderful loaves warm from the oven was the ultimate comfort food! I have since taken up baking sourdough bread and it makes me smile to see my family enjoy home made bread like I did as a young girl.
My favorite memory is when I finally conquered making a gingerbread house and decorating it all from scratch. I donated it to a holiday auction and it raised far more money than I ever expected for a wonderful charity.
my mom isn’t much into baking. i do remember cooking with her a ton when I was a kid. Now that we have a baby on the way I hope to create baking memories with our baby once he/she is bigger with grandma. I think those will be some fun and special memories. right now I bake mostly by myself unless my brother is around and then he will help me out! and he follows directions perfectly!
I remember my mom had a cookbook from her childhood that had a recipe for cinnamon rolls. When I was about 8 I asked my mom if we could make them and she said yes. We then spent that Saturday morning making homemade cinnamon rolls. Trying to fit the snake-like roll on the tiny apartment-sized kitchen counter was a little tricky, but we managed and ended up with some amazing treats!
Some of my favorite moments in the kitchen were with my mom making Indian sweets (I’m first generation Indian-American). I remember grating carrots or stirring a hot simple syrup… or waiting for water to drain out of a cheese ball to make a sweet pudding. We’ve moved on to cake and cookies, but every now and then, I just want one of my mom’s Indian sweets :)
My entire childhood is filled with memories of my mom baking in the kitchen. She baked every single day, I think. We always came home from school to something cooling on the counter…cookies, rolls, bread, muffins. People always ask me why I love to bake. Because of my mom!
I made a pumpkin pie the night before Thanksgiving. I put a towel over it and left it on the counter to cool. Needless to say, our cat walked across it and left 2 depressions in the towel. We no longer have pumpkin pie….. it’s “Paw-print Pie”, complete with pastry cutout pawprints baked on top. But I make sure to put it back in the oven to cool, if it’s bedtime. ;-)
Being the “official” baker of all things sweet at my job, I am always baking one thing or another……except pecan pie!! ( which is my all time favorite dessert). Unfortunately not enough work peers like pecan pie (blasphemy!) for me to take them to work. But I love the mini-version……I can make just 10 or so that way for the pecan pie lovers! My grandma also baked pecan pies at the holidays & I loved standing in the kitchen when I was young watching her hands just move around all those ingredients like that’s what she was born to do! Thanks for the flood of memories!!
The first time I managed to get a bundt cake out of the pan without it falling apart! I felt so accomplished.
I’m sure its a popular answer, but baking Christmas cookies with my grandma, sister, and cousin. We would spend an entire day cooking, making many many dozens of cookies.
I loved learning to bake from my grandmother. She taught me how to make pie. She also made dozens of cookies and candy. I have been making her recipes for years and my children will continue the tradition.
My favorite memory is my granpa making his signature Peanut Butter Fudge and Peanut Brittle every Christmas! He was such a great baker. I now do the fudge, and my uncle (his son) takes care of the brittle. Such a great family tradition to be able to carry on.
My favorite baking memories are with my dad. I follow the recipie and he doesn’t so we always come up with something interesting- some successes and some not. It is a blast though.
I baked with my grandmother growing up too. We would bake cookies together. One kind that she taught me and I make with my kids now are butter cookies. She even bought me my 1st cookie ‘gun’ with all the different disks so that I could make my own butter cookies when I got married. I loved spending weekends with her baking and really miss her!
My favorite baking memory was when my brother told me he could make Chocolate Chip Cookies better than me. Using a recipe other than my “old faithful” (the one on the Toll House package) he used a DISH of salt instead of a DASH of salt. He never tried to out bake me again. :0)
My favorite baking memories of those in my parents’s kitchen baking with my mom and now with my mom and my daughter.
One of my best baking memories is helping my mom make her famous no-bake cheesecake. I’m not sure if that really counts. We had to bake the crust though! :)
Making gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve with my in-laws. It’s a big glorious mess with gingerbread, frosting, and candy everywhere.
i loved baking apple pies with my grandmother. she knew how to make the best crisp flaky crust. she always made extra crust and would put butter and cinnamon/sugar on top and bake the scraps in the oven… so tasty!!
One of my fondest memories of baking is getting up early on a holiday weekend and visiting my grandmother to watch and learn how she made her famous yeast rolls. I wrote it down and try to replicate it every holiday for my extended family. “Are these Grandma’s Rolls? ” is the question asked every time , even though they know the answer. I have now demonstrated to my nephew who would like to carry on the recipe tradition!
Baking cookies for my papa -who loved to eat them warm out of the oven and gild them with a smear of butter! Wow mixers are a popular give-away item and I’m still hoping to win one!
Going to my grandma’s house, who was also a pie baker like you, and seeing all the holiday pies. She always made mini pumpkin ones for the grandchildren. Oh and she hid her cookie jar on top of the fridge but with a little teamwork my cousins and I would always find a way to get it down!
What a great giveaway!! My favorite baking memory is making cut-out cookies with my mom at Christmas time. She let us choose our shapes and decorate them with icing and it was always so special to me.
I love making Christmas cookies with my friends and family.
I love to bake! I have so many baking memories! My mother taught me how to bake pies and bread. We kids to turns kneading the dough. She made a homemade apple pie every Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have been apple to take that recipe with me all through college and now I share with my kids every year. My kids love to bake with me.
My favorite baking memory is helping my mom make frosted cut-out sugar cookies at the holidays. We would make dozens and dozens and pack them in tins to last the whole season!
I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone’s favourite memories – I almost forgot about the competition! My favourite memory would be making fairy cakes with my Mum and sister when a I really little – the 15 minute cooking time used to feel like forever, but licking the spoon and ‘taste testing’ the icing and buttercream definitely went down well :) Your uncle’s pecan pies look lovely Bakerella.
My favorite baking memory would start every year right after the table was cleared from our Thanksgiving meal. My daughter and a friend or friends would decorate the Gingerbread House that we had baked the day before. It would hold a place of prominence on our dining room table, until New Year’s Eve. We hosted an all family party that night. At the stroke of midnight the children (both young and old!) were able to dive in and eat to their hearts content.
I loved making spritz cookies at Christmastime with my mom and sisters. We used to make hundreds of them and give trays to all of our family and friends. Mom must have had dozens of the little wheels for the press and we loved pressing out all of the different shapes and decorating with all of the different sprinklels, sugars, etc. And if we broke one here or there of course we had to eat it!
My favorite memory of baking is when my girls were 3,4 &5 and the Nestle commercial came on with the song “We’re baking cookies, spending some time with you” and they would start singing it and the 5 yr old would go through the cabinet and get out the chocolate chips and 5lb bag of flour. Of course I’d give in and the 3 of them would put on their dad’s old t shirt’s and get messy mixing them up and trying to crack eggs! We usually ate more dough than cookies, and the floor was covered in flour/sugar. Now they still break out in song whenever they unpack the bag of chocolate chips from the grocery bags. They are now 8,9 & 10 and make the cookie dough themselves and I use the oven for them. So even though they are still young, they have started baking cookies for me:)
My grandmother used to bake cookies and make candy with her Swedish friend every Christmas. They made dozens of fantastic and unique treats. I had all of the recipes but one. Several years ago a friend gave me a cookbook with cookie recipes from all over the world and it had the recipe for the one I had been searching for! I always think of her, but never more than during the holidays.
Baking our Thanksgiving pies with my family around laughing and talking and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade playing in the background. Lucky me, I get to repeat it every year!
My favorite baking memory is making my grandmother’s Swedish Bread. Oh the memories of the wonderful smell of cardamom wafting through the house as it was baking and snitching little bits of the dough. Nana brought the recipe with her when she left Sweden and came to America in 1923. I have her little book of recipes handwritten in Swedish. What a priceless treasure–even though I can’t read them. I picture her as a young bride carefully writing her mother’s recipes before she left Sweden, so she could take her family recipes with her to carry on the traditions of her homeland.
Just one memory? Christmas 2008 we lived in Thailand and it was our first Christmas away from family. We invited a Thai friend to bake and decorate Christmas cookies with us. What fun to share a special family tradition with her. It made the holidays less lonely to open our home to others.
I loved as a kid when my mom would make chocolate chip cookies and she would have several cookie sheets lined up with perfect mounds of cookie dough ready to go. She would leave the room for a minute and my siblings and I would steal “several” mounds of raw cookie dough. I know, I know, we risked getting sick, but as kids, we didn’t know or care about that… we just LOVED the dough – and the smell of fresh cookies:)
favorite baking memory is helping my little girl bake and decorate her first cake. She had to put all the colors of frosting on it and she had to use all the sprinkles, but she was so focused and determined. We love to bake together now.