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Baking Sweet Memories

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

Pecan Pies

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

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

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

Mini Pies

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

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

And keep scrolling for a fun giveaway below…

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

Mama's Pecan Pies

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

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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

  • 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!


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6,453 comments on “Baking Sweet Memories”

  1. Probably baking muffins with my Grandma. She was (and is) a terrible baker, so they came out awful.

  2. I started out in the kitchen with my Mom rolling out cookie dough & then taking cookie cutters in a variety of shapes & making hordes of cookies. Then we would decorate with every color possible & little candies. I inherited my Mom’s cookie cutters & my husband’s Grandmother’s cookie cutters. Sometimes I just look at them & they always bring back yummy memories.

  3. When my brother and I were little my family would squeeze in our tiny kitchen in our old house and bake 12 different types of christmas cookies while wrapping presents and listening to old christmas records :)

  4. I have a lot of happy baking memories with my Mum during snow days. There are a lot of them up here in the Northeast! We would come inside pink-faced from playing in the snow and ready for a cup of tea, pop in a movie (Beauty in the Beast as kids; Bridget Jones Diary as teens!) and pick a project from one of her many bookies. Favorites includes Mocha Cupcakes, hermit cookies, and pumpkin whoopie pies. I sure do miss those days when I hoof it to work in the snow now as an adult!

  5. Making fausnaughts with my grandmother for Fausnaught Day. Fausnaughts are basically doughnuts and you make them on or for Fat Tuesday. My cousins and I used to have so much fun making and eating them.

  6. My favorite baking memory is my mom, 2 sisters, and I making Christmas cookies (many different kinds) before Christmas. We would listen to Manheim Steamroller Christmas CDs and have a wonderful time. I am doing the same with my two little girls!

  7. My dad only bakes at Christmas, but once December rolls around he’s in the kitchen whipping up peanut brittle, fudge, and cookies. I loved being able to help him as a kid, and I look forward to the treats whenever I visit for Christmas now.

  8. my favorite baking memory is the first time i made chocolate chip cookies with my little girl when she was 2. i let her pour in the chocolate chips and she was so excited to help!

  9. My best memory is also one of my biggest fails. I had come home from school and wanted to bake some cookies for my boyfriend (now husband, and one who won’t let me live this story down). In my defense, I thought I knew my mom’s storage system and set to measuring out the flour, sugar and such.

    It became abundantly clear that I did NOT know my mom’s storage system when I opened the oven about 6 minutes into the first batch and found a thin layer of cookie goo smeared across the baking stone and dripping into the bottom of the oven.

    Turns out that the container I THOUGHT was flour? Yeah, that was actually powdered sugar. Ooops.

    Now I check everything that doesn’t come from a marked bag before mixing ingredients. Lesson learned, the messy and embarrassing way. This might explain why I prefer cakes and cupcakes to cookies when it comes to baking. :)

  10. My favorite cooking memories are the memories I create with my children when we bake together. I love hearing my kids say “those bananas are ready to turn into bread”. Teaching them to level off the cups with a knife and read the recipes to scraping the bowl or filling the muffin tins are priceless moments. I even hear my own mothers words in my head as I explain why measuring is so important. “Baking is science” I can’t tell you how many times I heard that growing up and how many times I’ve told my kids the same thing.

  11. When I moved out of my parents’ house my two siblings were still pretty young. So I decided it would be fun to have them over and bake a chocolate cake from scratch. What’s more fun then spending the day with your big sister making a yummy sugar filled cake that Mom couldn’t tell you how big a piece to have?? Nothing of course! So we set out to get the ingredients. It called for cake flour. Hmm…well I couldn’t find cake flour, maybe bread flour would work, right? Mistake #1. Then I let my brother read the measurements and my sister measured and I mixed. Mistake #2. Somehow we ended-up with 2 Tbls of salt instead of 1/4 tsp. in the chocolate frosting, and of course, didn’t taste it before frosting the cake. Mistake #3. So we ended up with a brick of cake with salt frosting. The frosting was so bad it rendered the cake inedible. BUT, we still laugh about it to this day. Three major mistakes aside, I still managed to make a great memory for my siblings that we will share for the rest of our lives. And of course, now that I’m the family baker they always ask how the salt is when I bring anything.

  12. My favorite baking memory is baking Christmas cookies with my daughter for the first time. I remember how she had a little taste of everything before it went into the bowl and how she loved decorating the cookies with frosting and sugar.

  13. My favorite non-holiday baking memory is having the privilege of baking a mountain of tiny cupcakes for my sister’s wedding earlier this month – such a sweet time for me! As for the holidays, I love that within the last couple of years, my husband has become an expert caramel corn maker – I just give him a list of who is in desperate need of a batch, and into the kitchen he goes :)

  14. My grandma and I would make fudge together. She never used a thermometer for the fudge but would test the cooking candy by dropping some into cold water to see if it held up in a ball. She always used the same knife to cube the butter, would use her fingers and margarine to coat the “fudge plate” and would stir with the same spoon every time. She passed away this spring and I inherited the plate and the spoon…. I can’t wait to make some fudge with my kids this holiday season.

  15. My mom used to make cupcakes and cookies with me when I was younger. I guess I got inspired by that and now I’m baking away. Now my son is addicted to cupcakes and I cant wait til he is a little older so I can teach him just like my mom did.

  16. For birthdays in my family, my mom would always bake the birthday person’s favorite cake, or a new cake we had never had before that the birthday honoree wanted to try. We baked German chocolate, classic vanilla, Italian cream, and others.

  17. As with many others- my favorite baking memory is with my grandmother. When I was younger she would make all of us grandkids form an assembly line when making apple pies. I was pretty handy with a pairing knife so I was always sat at the peeling station and would peel away. She made THEE best apple pies- I still love making them to this day and can’t wait to share the tradition with my family someday!

  18. My favorite baking memory was baking donuts with my mom (yup, she bakes them instead of frying the dough).My mom would asked me to roll the dough and dust the finished donuts with powdered sugar. This was also my first baking experience. My mom is not much of a baker, but she can bake delicious donuts!

  19. This past New Years eve we had all the girls in the kitchen baking treats such as cake pops and pumpkin pies for a party we had that night. It was so much fun having all the girls of the families together in the kitchen sharing their fun recipes. Hope to make that a holiday tradition :)

  20. Anytime I bake with my kids it’s a great memory. The excitement they get from helping and the smiles on their faces from eating the tasty treats is priceless!

  21. I have several memories of baking with my mother who taught me everything I know in the kitchen! One of my favorites was baking cookies and selling them at a bake sale. They were so good she started selling them in stores after that!

  22. I used to love making chocolate chip cookies with my kids when they were little.

  23. When my boys were young we would make holiday cookies and it was always FUN times and PRECIOUS memories!!!! Two of my sons are really good cooks today and hopefully the other is on his way!!!

  24. My favorite baking memories are when my cousin and I were little, my grandma used to bake A LOT. We were always used to circle around her for a taste test, and how happy she was when we ate what she made. I miss her baking so much!

  25. When I was 19, my beloved favorite Uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He called me towards the end of it and said it was now my job to bake fudge and dvinity for people. I will never forget the pain he was in and that he pushed through it to teach me to make divinity. I love baking and this is my best baking memory!

  26. I loved baking with my grandmother. She taught me all I know about cooking and baking.

  27. Oh my gosh, wouldn’t this be the perfect giveaway to win around the holidays??!

    I started baking Christmas cookies and decorating them with my sons when they were little…and a couple years ago I was lucky enough to share that experience with my granddaughter and her great-grandmother! I baked up a bunch of sugar cookies ahead of time and we had a great big decorating party that was so full of laughs and fun! We had sprinkles and frosting everywhere! It turned out to be the last Christmas for my mother-in-law, which made it even more special!

  28. My first (and favorite!) baking memory is making a pavalova with my mum!

  29. Making my Great Aunt’s Fruit Cakes with my mom every year right before Thanksgiving. I have helped my mom make these ever since I can remember – we use a canning jar sterilizing pan to mix them up in, because it contained most of the mess that I would make when stirring things together when I was 3 or 4! They are not like usual fruit cake, there is no “cake” they are much more like fruit/nut rolls. They are delicious!

  30. Between my mom, sister and myself, one of us makes a streusel apple pie every Christmas. It’s one of my favorite traditions. :)

  31. I love baking with my sister; we always find the most delicious looking recipes to make and share with our family!

  32. My favorite holiday memory/tradition is making pumpkin bread and cream cheese frosting. I used to make it every Thanksgiving with my mom and now I make it with my girls! Love it!

  33. At the age of 99, you could find my great-grandmother in our kitchen making noodles from scratch, skillet cornbread, and my favorite, her apple pie. When I was a little girl, she would mesmerize my brother and I by peeling entire apples in one peel. We couldn’t believe she never once lifted her knife! I’ve never mastered that trick, but my first baking memories will always be of helping Great-Grandma McCullough roll pie dough while she told us stories of her long life. I was lucky to grow up with her in our home, and in our kitchen!

  34. My favorite baking memory is when I had my first grandchild, Rachel. By the time she was 2 she would come spend a Saturday in Dec. with me and we would bake. It was always such a joy to bake with her and my other grandkids as they came along. We have fun and I always look for new and easy recipes for the kids to participate in. I am a new reader to your blog and just love it!! Thank you for all you do, it’s so much fun to come and get inspired!!

  35. My favorite memories are of of my mom and I baking her traditional banana nut cake with coconut frosting and German chocolate cake with coconut icing and fudge YUM! She made these every year for family and friends and for our Christmas celebration. Once my mom was no longer able to bake I continued the tradition with my own children. My mom has passed on now but I love being able to give my family something from her and hopefully they will continue the tradition with their own children.

  36. Favorite memory: my oldest son and I like to make desserts (he’s the official taste-tester)…then he decides who gets the treats-we sneak to that person’s house, leave the goodies, he knocks on the door and we RUN!!!!

  37. I have fond memories of making cinnamon rolls with my girls to give as gifts to neighbors and friends. A tradition we started when my girls were little.Now that they are grown and married, when they are in town, we will bake together.

  38. My favorite baking memory is helping my Aunt Granny (yup, that’s what we called her because her siblings called her that – she was the oldest sibling) make her orange jello cake. She would let me punch the holes in the the cake to pour in the jello. Yummmmmm! Always had orange cake for visitors and you couldn’t leave without taking some home with you.

  39. Chistmas holiday time at our house included a huge open house party on Christmas Eve. Tables of yummy food and desserts! One of the staples every year was platters of rice krispy treats (I know, I know…that doesn’t really count as baking but they were scooped up and gone before any of the other desserts). Now, my tradition is to make hundreds of santa hat cake pops and include them with every familys gift pack.

  40. It’s funny this post is sponsored by Nestle, b/c it is a central ingredient to my favorite baking memory. It’s also funny that this is my favorite memory, considering it was one giant disaster :-)

    I was probably 10, and my cousin was 14. We decided to make Nestle Chocolate Chip Cookies… we thought everything went fine until we tasted them… they were terrible! Turns out my cousin added 1 tablespoon of salt instead of 1 teaspoon. We through the cookies outside for the birds to eat, and even THEY wouldn’t eat them, we had to go out and pick them back up after a few days, lol!

    Even though the cookies were a bust, it’s still a treasured family memory that we still laugh about 20 years later.

  41. I like to bake from scratch, but growing up, my mom was always busy with work, so even simple cookies from a premade cookie dough tube was a treat.

  42. My favorite baking memory was the first time I baked a sweet treat all by myself. I don’t remember how old I was exactly, maybe 10? I stirred together chocolate chip cookie dough, then baked it into 1 giant cookie, using a round pizza pan. I felt as if I had conquered the world! I don’t remember ever tasting a more delicious cookie than that first one I made all by myself.

  43. My aunt and I are 10 years apart and always used to bake together when I was younger. She used to stick me with the hand stirring of the batters. I broke a spoon or two on her but we always had good laughs! Now she sticks her daughter to the stirring since I am not around as much. We share recipes constantly yet, although according to her daughter, I am the only one allowed to make certain things since make them better. :-) So it is a fun competition at who can bake better!!

  44. My mom passed on her love of baking to me, and now I am teaching my daughter the same things. I love baking at Christmas time and now I’m making Easter and Halloween baking a priority.

  45. The first time I ever mixed up brownies was while I was staying with my Nana and it ended up with brownie batter everywhere… I think her white pants probably got the worst of it. That’s probably why I have so many aprons to date, I’m sure she could have used one then! At least the brownies were still delicious!

  46. I just love Sunday afternoon baking. Whether cookies or cupcakes, just makes the perfect end to my weekend.

  47. One of my most memorable times was revisited in a really positive time yesterday! One year ago, my stepfather had a quadruple bi-pass. Yesterday, on his 75th birthday, he won a 5k! So, scary memories to triumphant memories and he’s running circles around the rest of us MUCH YOUNGER family members! :0)

  48. I have many, many favorite baking memories. The ones that really come to mind are that every Christmas my dad and all of us four kids would bake & decorate all the Christmas cookies for our family. It was a tradition and we’ve passed it on to our kids.

  49. I loved baking Christmas cookies with my mom when I was little. Even at 31, I still go to my parents house to bake Christmas cookies

  50. I love that my son is getting into baking — at almost 7 years old, he’s fairly proficient around the kitchen. Getting a new, shiny Kitchenaid would surely be the icing on the cake, so to speak!

  51. Baking chocolate chip cookies with my Mom – she’s gone now, but her recipe is still the best!

  52. I loved baking lots of Christmas cookies with my mom growing up, and now I get to carry on that tradition with my little boys. They love helping, especially if it involves sprinkles, frosting or chocolate chips. :)

  53. I used to sit on a high stool at my grandpa’s bakery and he would give me scraps of dough along with my own miniature rolling pin so I could make donuts with him. I have such fond memories of my “Papaw”. He was an excellent baker. I still can smell his ‘old spice’ as I remember all the fond memories of my childhood with him in the kitchen/bakery. Donuts and cream pies were our favorite!

  54. My favorite baking memories are baking random cakes and cookies with my mother when I would come back from college for Thanksgiving or Christmas!

  55. My favorite baking memory was making monkey bread with my young nieces. They were so excited to be able to “help” in the kitchen and the youngest lost her balance and knocked over the bowl of melted butter. Instead of getting angry, I couldn’t help but laugh as she sat there with her hands glistening from all that melted butter. They are older now, but always ask to bake with me!

  56. Baking the rolled sugar cookies for Christmas and helping my mom decorate them!! That’s when dregges were legal in California, miss those guys!!

  57. It is a tie! Making Danish pastries with my Mom or gingerbread houses with my girls.

  58. Making cookies with my mom for Christmas. Now that she’s passed I’m happy to carry on taht tradition with my own children. Though i will admit sometimes I like to make some on my own just to remember my time with my mom.

  59. When my youngest child turned 5 I saw a teddy bear cake in a magazine. It was constructed with cakes baked in different sized cans. Today at age 70, every time I see that photo I smile. It was a great time for my Annie and me, but also began a life long love of baking and designing cakes. From that bear birthday cake I went on to make wedding cakes for many grateful brides.

  60. I remember my grandmother making desert. She never let us help, we just wouldn’t do it right (and we might figure out her secret recipe for making wonderful deserts), but she would let us sit at the table and color while she baked.

  61. My favorite baking memory is actually a very recent one. I married the love of my life on our 8th anniversary last year and I created our entire dessert table myself rather than paying for a wedding cake. I ended up making rosette apple tartlets, Lydia Jacobs pear tartlets, mint chocolate fudge, chocolate walnut fudge, neopolitan Rice Krispie treats, gluten free tiramisu cups, lychee panna cotta cups, and instead of cake I made a three tiered pavlova. And my husband made our cake toppers, which were our monster likenesses of ourselves, as we had a monster movie themed wedding.

  62. Baking at the holidays always meant my Aunt Sally’s divinity and burnt peanuts. It’s not Christmas without a batch of both at my place now!

  63. My best baking memory are any of them that have my mother in them. She taught me it’s ok to lick the bowl and to always leave room for cake! This is my first holiday without her and hoping that I can just get through it.

  64. I just made a new baking memory with my 2-year old daughter a couple weeks ago…she licked the beaters for the first time and LOVED every second of it…so much so that I “dipped” them in a second time :) It was such a sweet moment. I remember doing the same thing growing up…it was such a special treat!

  65. My favorite baking memory would have to be making gingerbread cookie ornaments for our Christmas tree for the very first time with my sweet little girl for the very first time. I always made these with my Mom and it was such a sweet experience to teach my little one.

  66. My siblings and I would go to Alabama to visit my dad every summer. We loved going to my Grandma’s house to visit her while down there. My favorite baking memory was just her and I baking chocolate cookies with M&M’s. It was then that I fell in love with baking and have been baking since.

  67. My favorite baking memory happened on a day when the kids got out of school early. I was experimenting with mini s’more cupcakes and all the neighbor kids were gathered in my kitchen eating them as fast as I could bake them. They thought I was the cat’s meow:)

  68. those pies look delicious! now i’m craving something sweet at 9 am. my favorite memory is decorating gingerbread houses with my mom, sister, and brother at christmastime. it’s not as fun now that i live far away from them, but thinking of those times makes me smile. thanks for the giveaway!

  69. My favorite baking memory was baking 3 batches of cookies for a crowd and adding salt instead of sugar into each batch, lol. We didn’t discover the mishap until the 3rd batch in, boy that was the highlight of the night. We couldn’t stop laughing.

  70. For 9 years I hosted a Cookie Exchange. It was BIG and it was a BIG deal! Those are my fondest memories……the stress of making 40+ dozen cookies. but I loved every minute of it!

  71. I don’t come from a family of particularly adept bakers, but one year my sister and I decided to try and make a rainbow cake. We put wayyyy too much food colouring, so each layer was a bright neon shade instead of the soft pastel the recipe suggested. We had the most wonderful time making the cake, and the end result looked fabulous even if it tasted awful :)

  72. My favorite memory baking is when I decorated my first ruffle cake. It was for my best friend’s birthday, and it was a fun experience. I made a special trip to Starbucks to get coffee for the cake, and the decorating was definitely a blast. He also really loved it.

    Thanks Bakerella!

  73. making Christmas cookies with my Mom, Grandma and sisters every year! :)

  74. My favorite bakng memory would have to be helping my mom bake chcoolate chip cookies when my brother and I were really young. After everything was mixed, we’d put some cookie dough onto some tiny trays and into our plastic play stove… then my mother would send us into our room to play until they were done baking. I don’t know when we finally caught on that she was moving the cookie dough into the real oven!

  75. my favorite baking memory is with my granny – she made the best rolls and i would love being in their old kitchen with her as she pinched out the perfect size rolls from the dough! i can still smell them… :)

  76. In the family, I’m the only that bakes. I just had my first baby and it was around Christmas when I could not afford any gifts. So I bought a Mrs. Fields Cookie Book and baked cookies for my friends. I put the cookies in the refrigerator and forgot to put a liner in between the cookies and they all got stuck together. I’ve never made that many cookies before. I was so disappointed but salvaged whatever I could and wrapped them in cellophane and put a bow on it. I took my son with me, put him in the stroller and delivered the cookies. My friends told me the cookies were delicious.

  77. My favorite baking memory is ones we have made recently. My son is now 8 and is eager to help me bake for our annual holiday treat baskets we hand out to all our neighbors. Last year, he was able to help me make banana bread, cake pops, wedding cookies, snowman sugar cookies and many more treats. I should’ve started this a lot sooner because it was time to bond and he did excellent baking! This year I am excited to get my other son who is 2 more involved. It is rare to get real bonding moments with just me and my son, and baking has made us so much closer. 2 hours of uninterrupted time to chat and learn so much about him :-) I love it!

  78. My favorite memory is baking my nephew’s 2nd birthday cake. It was the first cake I had ever made. I made a toolbox cake and all of the tools and nails too. I would love to have a new kitchaid mixer!!!!

  79. My favorite baking memory is our famous Christmas cookie contest that we have with my mom’s side of the family every year. We make a ton of cookies, do a cookie exchange, and then one of the uncles judges all of the cookies to pick a winner each year. It’s the best!

  80. I love baking anything with my little girls. It’s fun to see how their jobs change as they get older!

  81. Thanksgiving is always the best time for me. Every year, my family gets together in the kitchen to cook and tells stories (the same great ones every year). My Grandpa was the center of our “kitchen universe”, but he passed away in 2007, and now each year we celebrate him whenever the family gets together to cook.

  82. I loved baking and decorating sugar cookies at Christmas with my family! And eating the dough!

  83. My very favorite memory is my mom picking me up early from school one day and we spent the whole afternoon making and decorating Christmas cookies. Best day ever!

  84. I have sweet memories of baking with my dad. My mom is an amazing cook, but she never really did much baking. Whenever my parents would have dinner parties, she would leave dessert up to me and my dad. We had so much fun perfecting recipes and it instilled in me the love of baking I have today!

  85. When I was about 7 years old I would stay with my grandmother during the summer. My aunt lived in the same small town and I would carry a brown paper sack full of ingredients to her house so we could bake yeast rolls. I loved having my aunt all to myself and being rewarded with the hot buttery rolls at the end of the day. I can’t think of many things better than using pieces of the hot roll to sop up the melted butter. Yum!

  86. Some of my favorite baking memories were during my senior year of college. My sorority house would get in bananas during our weekly food shipments for the house. Whenever they started to brown I’d make them into banana chocolate chip loafs. Sometimes they wouldn’t last that long and everyone would be said there wasn’t any banana bread at the end of the week so the next week a bunch of sisters would hoard bananas and let them go bad; one time I ended up making 5 loafs… It was always worth it though because someone would always join me in the kitchen. I got to know a lot of the incoming class that way.

  87. Favorite baking memory is with my twin sister making our heart shaped birthday cakes as kids. She would decorate my cake and I would decorate her cake.

  88. My favorite baking is memory is being a little girl and getting to bake with my Grandpa. I loved going down to the basement and helping him make cookies and pies. He has been gone for over 10 yrs and I miss baking with him so much. He was a really special man and a great baker!

  89. my favorite baking memory would have to be christmas one year when i was really young, and got an easy bake oven. the first ever cake i made with that, was a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. my grandpa loves chocolate and really loved the little cake. i miss him.

  90. My favorite baking memory is from last Thanksgiving. I teach at a school attended by many low-income families and we had a Thanksgiving dinner at school. I stayed up until three in the morning making six pies: two apple, two pumpkin cream, and two chocolate cream. It was late night peacefulness t to sit on my foot stool next to the oven and watch them bake. The students and their parents all enjoyed the pies and they in turn brought delicious food that we all enjoyed sharing.

  91. My favorite memory is when my daughter wanted to have a party for my husband to show him how much we love him. We made a delicious chocolate cake! She’s only 4, so it was really cute. Thank you for the giveaway, I am really hoping I win this!!!

  92. I have 2 fond memories. Making Tamales with my mom, aunts, siblings and cousins during the holidays. Second is baking with my daughter.

  93. My grandma taught me to make her pie crust, and after a few frustrating attempts on my own, I’ve gotten it down just right. A few years ago around Easter, she was busy busy busy taking care of my grandpa, who was in poor health, so she couldn’t make the pies for Easter Sunday dinner. We were all still meeting at her house to eat so that my grandpa could be with us. I baked three pies…apple, cherry, and a new experiment, peach raspberry. My grandpa LOVED the peach raspberry and asked to keep some of the leftovers. He passed away later that week, and later my grandma told me he had been snacking on that peach pie every night. I realize now that it sounds like my peach pie killed him, but he had congenital heart failure, I promise. :) I was glad to know that something I had made had brought him some enjoyment during his final days when he didn’t have much else to look forward to. I haven’t made the peach raspberry pie since then, but I think I’ll dig out that recipe again soon and spend some time with my grandma!

  94. The favorite thing I made was Valentine cookies for the troops when my son was in Afghanistan with Army messages on them. Right now I’m working on a WWE championship belt for my son’s birthday. I have fun no matter what i work on!

  95. We often laugh remembering the batch of sugar cookies my brother made when we were kids. They smelled great and were beautiful but, he had reversed the amounts of sugar and salt. What a shock/ disappointment when they were sampled. Salt cookies, anyone?

  96. My favorite memory was making cookie packages to send back home. I was in college and my roommate and I scrounged up enough money to make little treats for everyone back home. We were stuck in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp with a dodgy oven, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

  97. I remember being little and standing on a chair to help my grandmother make apple pie. She made the BEST apple pie of all time; I can’t even reproduce it today. I make it just like she showed me, but it is never as good.

  98. We are definitely a family of bakers on my mom’s side. One recipe we constantly used was the Rum Cake recipe out of an old book put together by a church. When I was home from college one winter break, my mom took it upon herself (and me) to bake rum cakes for friends’ Christmas presents. She bought a bunch of lovely snowflake cake plates from Hobby Lobby, and I set to baking the rum cakes Texas-shaped of course! We baked 18 cakes within the span of 4 days, and that was only with two Texas-shaped cake pans along with LOTS of washing. It was worth it to deliver them to our family’s friends. :)

  99. My favorite baking memory is making my kid’s birthday cakes each year, I make them the number they are turning, and my 18 year old son still wants me to make them each year!

  100. I don’t really have one that comes to mind! I’ve been baking cookies with my mom for as long as I can remember! We baked for the holidays, family & friends’ weddings and random bake sales! There were a few years she was selling boxes of our favorite cookies for the holidays. She sold so many boxes that she baked nonstop for weeks and I’d help as soon as I got out of school!!

  101. My favorite baking memory is making butter cookies with a cookie press with my mom at Christmas. I always got so excited to be mommy’s helper and have the ever important task of pressing the cookies into shapes and their taste has really become synonymous with Christmas. My mom has since passed on, but I dig out the cookie press each Christmas and when I take a bite I feel like she’s right there baking with me again.

  102. My favorite memory of baking is when my grandmother and I made fried apple pies from scratch. We went and picked the apples off of the tree and made the dough from scratch. They turned out delicious!

  103. My favorite baking memory is helping my mom make snickerdoodles every year at Christmas….rolling those perfect little balls of dough in cinnamon sugar, spacing them out precisely on the cookie sheet, smooshing them flat to bake, then eating them still warm from the oven. Buttery, cinnamony, sweet, amazing goodness!

  104. Baking with my grandma is my favorite baking memory. She was Danish and had a whole set of Christmas cookies that we used to bake.

  105. Easy-yearly gingerbread houses with my mom. They have definitely become a family tradition! Everyone can help from baking to decorating to making sure there’s not too much leftover candy.

  106. I always loved helping my Grandma with all of her Christmas treats. She made everything from cookies, to cakes, to candy, but was most well-known for her peanut-brittle.

  107. I love baking and decorating Christmas cookies with my kids each year. It has been fun to see their decorating skills change over the years.

  108. When I was little, Mama got up every morning and baked biscuits for breakfast. Daddy said that toast was like eating cardboard, so Mama would bake fresh hot biscuits. I would crawl out of bed when I heard her in the kitchen. I’d pull a chair over to the counter and stand there watching her knead and roll out the dough. My father died when I was five and this early morning tradition came to a screeching halt. But these memories are still fresh 36 years later.

  109. My favorite baking memory is making soft pretzels in unusual, fun shapes with my mom when I was young. Something I hope to pass on to my own daughter now. :)

  110. My grandma’s two sisters worked at a local bakery. I loved nothing more than staying with them when they baked for Christmas….and they gave me all their recipes when they passed. I plan on making a book and give copies to everyone in my family so we can pass on the tradition.

  111. My favorite baking memory would have to be making candy with my best friend. We’d get together at the beginning of every December and bake our little hearts out. So fun…. We don’t get to do it anymore because we live so far apart now. But it was so fun!

  112. Visiting my sister with one of my other sisters, my brother and their spouses and decided to bake a surprise dessert for everyone. Got everything prepped, cooked and served the cake I thought should taste wonderful. Everyone took a bite, got a strange look on their face, and spit it out. My sister keeps salt in her sugar canister. The dog wouldnt even eat the cake.

  113. My mom was a single working mother so she worked alot. Sometimes when she would come home and after we ate dinner, we would make sugar cookies together with my older sister. We would make them in whatever shape was relavent for the season and we would decorate them together with frosting in different colors and different sprinkles. It was always something I’ve always enjoyed and looked back on as great memories.

  114. I remember making sugar cookies at Christmas time with all the sprinkles. We always got one lumpy cookies when all the others were cut out. I’d put every type of sprinkles on there :)

  115. My favorite baking memory is not a sweet one…Its about a peach upside down cake that I tried to bake ..well 3 times in a day and every time the brown sugar butter got burnt…and I had to trash all the three cakes..:(

  116. When I was little, my grandmother, sister and I tried to make Buckeyes. It was the messiest, stickiest thing I’ve ever baked! We laughed and laughed and then had a chocolate fight! It was one of my favorite times!

  117. One of my favorite baking memories is going with my mom when she taught a community continuing education bread making class at a local junior high! She ran a small bakery out of our home for a number of years when I was younger and made baked goods for hospital/clinic auxiliary functions! My mom made the most delicious baked goods and her white bread toasted with butter is still a favorite memory! Yum!

  118. I think I actually have 2 favorites. Everything Thanksgiving, my mom and I make a recipe of sweet & sour mushrooms that was handed down from my grandmother. My mom tells the story every year, that my grandpa would take her brothers out for mushrooms & they’d bring back numerous bushels of ’em! I know that’s cooking, not baking. :) The baking one is just watching my mom put together her version of pecan pies! She only makes them for Thanksgiving. I LOVE ’em!

  119. We have a family tradition each year of hosting a Cookie Day in December where all the ladies get together in one kitchen and bake holiday cookies. It is so fun, and we look forward to it each year. I have brought some Bakerella recipes to the group in the last few years after following this blog – and they have all been big hits!

  120. Baking cookies with my sisters. We are all in the same kitchen making our favorite cookie or bar recipes and have such a great time. It happens about once a year but it’s my favorite time!

  121. My favorite memory is making cookies with friends around the holidays – christmas music, cocktails and baking with friends – love it!

  122. My favorite baking memory would be with my own kids. My oldest in only 9, but I have five total and we make a huge batch of sugar cookies every December. Each kid gets their own big ball of dough to roll out and cookie-cut as pleased! Then they decorate to their little hearts content and they have their own batch to do with what they please. They usually all end up trading them around with each other and saving a few for gifts (and Santa, of course). They have made some super fun and really cute cookies. And our time together is definitely priceless!

  123. My favorite baking memories are with my grandmother and my father. They both love(d) to bake Christmas cookies. We are Swedish so Grandma use to make Swedish lace cookies, Peppakakor, Spritz and more! She passed in 2002 so my dad carries on the tradition. He makes the same cookies plus a few more! And now he shares that tradition with my children. I love that my family will carry on the Christmas cookie tradition for many generations to come!

  124. Every year for Christmas for as long as I remember, my family gets together to decorate sugar cut-out cookies and bake all of our traditional Christmas cookies and now we are passing this tradition down to our own children. Generation to generation, as many of us as possible, we all get together. And of course have the pot of coffee brewing. Oh the smells, the tastes, and the fun conversations!!! Can’t wait for it this year!

  125. Decorating & baking Christmas cookies with my family :)

  126. My favorite baking memory is making Christmas cutout cookies with my grandma. My sister and I would help her cut them out and decorate them (and we’d sneak tastes of the dough when she wasn’t looking), and they always tasted so good. She’s gone, but I still use her recipe — it wouldn’t be Christmas without it.

  127. My mom baked for my dad who was a diabetic, so she had to modify her recipes. Unfortunately they were all in her not in a book. She is 91 years young now and cannot remember all that she baked. I am now teaching my 8 yr old granddaughter things while I still remember. We like to cook and now she wants to learn to sew. One day I pulled out the plastic bowl covers for the cookie batter and when I came back into the kitchen my granddaughter had it on her head. I told her it was for the bowl and she said “the school lunchroom women wear it on their heads”. I took pictures for our scrapbook!

  128. My favorite baking memory is: Growing up every Christmas Eve my Dad would bake sugar cookies and my sisters and I would decorate them. We would always listen to Christmas music classics like Jim Reeves & John Denver. Baking & decorating those cookies are still my favorite memories.

  129. My favorite baking memory is helping my grandmother make coca-cola cake when I was little. She was always making a ham at the same time, because it was only made on special occasions. When I got older, about 10 years after she’d passed, I tried to make it again – I can’t believe it had basically a 5 lb bag of sugar in the cake (with frosting), in ADDITION to all that soda. No wonder we were always hyper at her house! :)

  130. My earliest and favorite baking memories are of helping my great aunt. She seemed to always be baking but it was especially fun around the holidays when she made Moravian cookies and coconut cake using actual coconuts that she had to crack open. Thanks for the giveaway.

  131. Making bear-shaped bread with my dad every Christmas!

  132. I don’t remember doing a whole of bakingn with my Mother but I always loved it when my birthday came around because she always made us home made birthday cakes that were such a treat!! I now love to bake – anything and everything!!

  133. Every year before I moved out I always enjoyed helping my mom pound out her annual pumpkin rolls as holiday gifts. We would take a day or two to take over the entire kitchen with mixing, baking, rolling, icing, wrapping, and decorating!

  134. The simple memory of my mom making cinnamon rolls on weekend mornings. It was such a treat!

  135. My maternal Grandmother was a farmer’s wife, so she made most of her sweets by hand. What I remember the most was wondering how that meringue was made and how beautiful it was after baking and the taste, MmmmmmMMmmmmmm. My favorite pie was lemon meringue.

  136. I had a 2nd grade school project to make cookies but we didn’t have the right ingredients at home. My mom improvised by using cake mix (this was a good 20 years ago so the cake mix cookie recipe wasn’t known and there was no internet to look it up on!) and skittles and we ended up with the most delicious pancake-like rainbow cookies. Even though the recipe seemed doomed to fail, they were delicious! I love making them with her and can’t wait to make them with my future children.

  137. My favorite baking memory is the first time I had my god daoghter making brownies with me. She couldn’t believe how much fun it was to be baking with someone. She still makes them to this day and it is one of her favorite things to bake.

  138. Any time I helped my grandma in the kitchen. She has been gone for 20 years and I treasure any recipe in her handwriting. Whether it was homemade pierogi, her famous apple slices or just a simple dip, they are memories that are great.

  139. Not exactly baking per se, but it wouldn’t be Christmas at my house without making my grandma’s bourbon balls.

  140. My most memorable baking memory was trying to convince my mother that baking chocolate still was pretty tasty. She kept telling me no. She finally gave in and let me bite it. She was right! Yuck! I’ve been through that with my kids now. So far, they’ve given up. One day though, they’ll get a mouthful!

  141. Loved baking pies with my mom to enter in our fall fair :)

  142. My favorite baking memory is definitely decorating cut-out cookies at Christmastime. My mom and sisters and I would make a huge mess on the kitchen table, but we loved every minute of it!

  143. I used to make sugar cookies with my mom, long passed on, and now my daughter invites all her friends over for a day of decorating each Christmas. she bakes the hundreds of cookies and freezes them and provides the decorations. Everyone goes home with a plate…..I love it!

  144. I have endless baking memories. The best are when my mom was teaching me how to bake and of course baking the 15 pies we have for Thanksgiving! I love those memories..! Baking, family, and friends are the best memories ai could ask for honestly.

  145. I have lots of favorite baking memories! I grew up in a home with four girls and now my husband and I have four daughters of our own! Baking sugar cookies for Christmas is always hands down my favorite. It such a neat way to make little works of art that taste amazing and I love to see my daughters’ pride in their tiny creations. I always enjoyed helping my Mom in the kitchen and now I get to do that with my own. Sweetness!

  146. my baking memory is making snowball cookies. my mom made these every Christmas for my brother, Fred. when Fred was killed in Vietnam in 1968, my mom continued to make these every Christmas saying “they were Fred’s favorite”. The Christmas my Mom couldn’t bake any more, i made snowballs because they were Fred’s favorite and to keep that special love my Mom had for him alive. when i start my Christmas baking, i always make snowballs as one of the first cookies i bake. it’s a way of keeping Fred and now my Mom with me at holiday times. can’t way to make your pies.

  147. Baking around the holidays is a tradition in my family. It always smells so wonderful when my mom starts baking cakes and other holiday sweets just a few days before Christmas. Now that there are more little kids in the family with my little ones, my niece and nephew and cousins, we get all the kids together to make Christmas cookies and decorate them. Everyone has so much fun. Such a wonderful time for everyone.

  148. My first perfect pie! :)

  149. Trying to take a picture of an apple pie my husband made. Tip it up a little, little more, little more, half the pie in the floor. Still makes me laugh.

  150. My favorite memories are the ones that I am making now with my children….they love sprinkles! Lol!

    By the way, what does removing the roosters mean? Lol!

  151. Coming home from school to warm homemade bread with butter and homemade jam. Yum!

  152. My favorite baking memory is around christmas eve every year, my family and I get together and bake many christmas desserts in my moms house. Its the best time of year for all of us to pop open a bottle of red Merlot and drink while we put together some pies for christmas dinner. The funny thing is that my cousin cant bake so she seems to always leave out an ingredient and seem to mess up the dessert. Its always the best times together as a family. I just love the Holiday season and its a good excuse to stuff my face with pecan and pumpkin pie!

  153. My favorite baking memory is from my childhood, making gingerbread cookies with my grandma (who has passed on) and my cousins. She’d get us all together every Christmas season and we’d bake and decorate gingerbread men. Now as an adult, I appreciate so much that she took the time to do that with us. Wonderful memory! Love you grandma!!

  154. My favorite memory is baking with my children on Christmas

  155. Baking with my grandma. It didn’t matter what it was. I loved spending time with her in the kitchen. Though right now the memory coming to mind is her mile high lemon meringue and that on more than one occassion the meringue had to be scrapped off as it burnt under the broiler. :)

  156. My grandmother always made homemade caramels at Christmas time and all of us kids would try to help her wrap them individually in wax paper. I think she always had to make a triple batch since we mostly just ate them as we went along!

  157. My favorite baking memories is when my mom and sisters and I would all make hot cross buns for Easter!

  158. every year I bake sugar cookies with my kiddies and I started when my daughter was a year old!! it is my favorite to see how creative she gets every year!!

  159. When I was 10 years old, I told my mother that I was going outside to play with friends. Instead, I went to my next door neighbor’s house and spent the morning and early afternoon baking and decorating my mom a birthday cake. It was in a Wilton teddy bear pan. To this day, every year on her birthday, my mom tells people the story. It’s one of both her’s and mine favorite memories — a surprise cake baked with tons of love.

  160. i love participating in cookie exchanges. i remember the year i made “stained glass” trees with my preschooler for his class exchange. it was the first time i’d tried anything so complicated and we so excited as to how they turned out!

  161. I have three — My grandmother teaching me how to make her famous apple dumplings, all the Christmases growing up and baking cookies with my brother and sister, and the first time that my daughter was big enough to “help” me make the Christmas cookies.

  162. I only saw my grandparents each Thanksgiving, so I remember as a child helping out my grandma on the big day! Lots of cookies, cakes and pies!

  163. It’s funny that you posted this one again because I was going to make these in he next few days. My favorite baking memory is having my son who’s 7 help me do our Holiday baking. We have tons of magazines and books and we’ll chose our favorites for that season. I love letting him create his own and now he’ll say, “Mom that needs this and/or that.” and yes, I’m now Mom instead of Mommy because he’s soo old now! This season we’re hoping to get his baby sister who’s One in the kitchen with us. She already loves the sound of the mixer!

  164. With small kids I make memories everyday, but I will never forget my daughter eagerly helping me mix batter to get a taste at the end. I call her batter monster.

  165. Sweet Potato Pies or Cold Oven Pound Cake. My grandmother is still alive and unable to bake like she used to. Weather I’m at her house or mine I make sure to call her from the beginning to “tell” me her recipe. I have it written down. But this way we connect and have a shared time to talk and bake her recipes together.

  166. My favorite memory, about 20 yrs ago when I was taking cake decorating classes. I was experimenting, I bought an Easter cross cake pan. And with the pan came a picture of how they decorated their cake. I decorated my cake exactly. It was the most beautiful cake I have ever done to date. I was shocked at how beautiful it was. Tons of detail. I was so proud of myself I could of cried. I couldn’t believe ( I ) had created something so beautiful. Well Easter dinner was on the table, along with the cake. My mother in law came over and I watched her expression, her eyes just opened wide. But she never said a thing about it. She never liked me. But inside I knew I had done something that she liked. I still smile to myself to this day, to me, that was a good memory. My husband and kids loved it and told me so, how great is that :)

  167. My most treasured holiday baking memory is baking sugar cut-out cookies & decorating them w/royal icing, sprinkles, etc. & then wrapped them in clear saran wrap with a ribbon & a hook. We did this every Christmas holiday season & put them on a smaller christmas tree as ornaments. Then when visitors came, they got to choose a cookie to eat or take with them!!! We had so much fun, & spent some really good moments with each other!!! Thanks mom

  168. I have such fond memories of baking with my daughter during the holidays. I miss my baking buddy since she’s all grown up now and is off at college. I look forward to having grandchildren to bake – but I’m not too eager for that to happen just yet !!!

  169. Attempting to make macarons w/ my momma :)

  170. Wow – only 1 baking memory?! I grew up with a family full of bakers. I think one of my favorite memories is when literally everyone used to come to my house about this time of year to make enough apple pies to feed an army for a year. The baking fest would start with my parents traveling to visit friends in Grand Junction, Colorado. Grand Junction is known for it’s fruit trees. One year, my parents’ trip was too late for peaches and pears so they bought apples and we began the apple pie baking.

    The men would core and peel the apples. The youth would slice the apples and mix them with the delicious smelling cinnamon, butter, flour and a bit of sugar. The women would manage the crusts. At the end of a day of working together to improve and accomplish our goals – we’d have enough apple pies assembled and ready for freezing for each family to have one pie a month for a year (with a couple extra for holidays). It was fabulous – and something I miss. Especially since I just spent the weekend canning my tomatoes into salsa, tomato sauce and tomato paste with little help. I’m certain my engineer dad would have had a few improvements to make on the process!

    Thanks for the opportunity to reminisce and to potentially win a fabulous prize! I’m hoping that some day I’ll win one here!

  171. My favorite holiday baking memory is making Christmas cookies for the first time with my daughter when she was four. I love that I started a new tradition with her that I didn’t have growing up (my mom isn’t much of a baker).

  172. The first year in our new house, my son was two and a half and was not tall enough to see over the countertops. The week before Christmas, I made a giant pan of fudge to share with family and friends and left it on the counter to cool while I jumped in the shower. I decided that it was too quiet in the house half way through my shower, and wandered the house looking for my son. He was in the kitchen, on the very tip of his tippy toes, with a rubber spatula, digging in the pan of fudge with his face covered from nose to chin with melty fudge! I ran for my camera and actually got the picture before he noticed me! That is my very most favorite “baking” memory :o)

  173. Although I’ve got some wonderful baking memories with my kids already, my absolute favorite is making decorated Christmas sugar cookies with my cousins every year. My aunt hosted every year and she went all out. She always pre-made the dough perfectly. She provided lots of cookie cutters, so we’d all cut out our cookies, watch them bake and then use what seemed like a million colored icings, sprinkles and decos. We got to keep all that we decorated. She made hot cocoa and, of course, Nana would make us tamales that day to eat after cookie making was done. I’m tearing up at the memory – so grateful for it :)

  174. My mom loves to bake and has passed that down to me. My favorite memory was just yesterday, baking 5 dozen cupcakes for my sweet baby girl’s 1st birthday! She sat in her high chair and kept me company!

  175. The first dinner I prepared to my groom-to-be John, was very special, as he put loooots and loooots of pressure on it, saying it was his last high expectation on me, to really propose… I spent hours thinking on what to cook and ended up preparing a simple dinner with rice, mashed potatos and a mix of ground meet, diced eggplant and spices… He loooved it and we had a great night ! =)

  176. My favorite baking memory is making chocolate dipped sugar cookies (with oatmeal in them) with my mom! We used to shape them into letters for everyone’s name in my family!

  177. I’ve always enjoyed baking with my Mom around Christmas time.

  178. I love the version of pecan pie with bourbon in it. Very tasty for the holidays.

  179. My favorite baking memory is from when I was about 4… and my Grandmother, who was on a VERY limited budget, had a pie baking ‘party’ and in addition to my sister and I, had a bunch of the low income kids from the neighborhood come to her apartment for a cooking lesson.

    These were kids whose parents left them alone all day with whichever relative was ‘around’ that day while they were at work, and saying they didn’t have a lot of opportunities is putting it mildly. And my Gramma just wanted to give them a nice afternoon, and maybe even teach them something they could use later. And on top of it all, have a pie for dessert!

    She bought tins down at the local Salvation Army, and then headed to Haymarket farmer’s market (Boston, MA) which was just a train stop away, and picked up bags of apples from the ‘castoffs’ – apples tossed to the curb because they’d gotten banged or bruised… but just fine for pie making! Some people would consider it trash picking, my Grandmother considered it not being wasteful, and thrifty.

    I was only 4 and couldn’t really see the significance of any of this, but when I think back to it now, it brings tears to my eyes.

    I learned how to help make an apple pie that day… but learned much more important lessons for later in my life.

  180. My favorite baking memory is making carrot cake with my mom. It’s the first thing I learned how to bake and over the years have learned how to make it better and better each time it’s made. I love to make it for my dad since it’s really the only cake he will eat and he gets so excited when we make it.

  181. The first thing I ever learned to bake were biscuits. The kind with lard and flour. My Mamaw (grandmother) taught me. I had to stand on a stool in the kitchen while she showed me how to cut the lard into the dough and then use a special cutter to form the biscuits. I watched them bake through the window of the stove while she cleaned up the kitchen. It is definitely one of my favorite memories of her that I will always cherish.

  182. I love to bake and I have gotten my 3 young boys to enjoy it with me. They love Christmas time, when they can bake several different kinds. They also like to help with the nutrolls and poppyseed rolls.

  183. I loved baking with my grandma anytime, but one of my favorite memories has to be when she sent me a care package of peanut butter cookies my first semester in college. I picked up the package on the way to class and shared with everyone, and the professor waved his cookie around for an hour talking about the architecture of Chicago before suddenly saying, “Hold on, I have to eat this cookie!” She got a kick out of that when I told her.

  184. Anytime my best friend and I are in the kitchen baking is a favorite memory for me. The creativity that flows between us puts out some of the greatest things to ever come out of our kitchens! I also love being in the kitchen with my mom and grandma. I learn so much from them and how to do things the “old fashioned way”. One of my favorite gifts I have ever received was when my grandma gave me her mothers rolling pin. I smile every time I use it!

  185. An oven is not a household appliance in China. Therefore I never baked anything until I came to the US. My very first baking experience is a Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow cake. Yep, a cake-mix cake. Since then, I fell in love with baking and learned to make cookies, cakes, breads,pies and pastries etc. etc. from scratch. My baked goods are always expected when there is a potluck or party with friends. While I have baked many things, the cake-mix cake will always be remembered.

  186. My two daughters and I used to make several different kinds of cookies to give away at Christmas to our friends. As we all have gotten older with other demands on our time we just don’t have time to get them all done so we stick to just one kind, a favorite for us all….Peanut Butter Hershey Kiss cookies.

  187. It isn’t a sweet baking memory.

    My dad has always been one of those people who likes to make comments about your cooking as you are doing it. Critiquing and being a bit snarky. I remember making one of my first pizzas and my mom and I were trying to spread the dough out in the pan. My dad came along and was telling us it was too thin here and there, so we kept poking and prodding at the crust.

    Needless to say, some areas ended up being too thin. We had too many toppings, so the pizza was a bit hard to eat (not enough crust to hold the liquidy toppings up), but it was still delicious. I love thinking about it, but I’m a much better cook when he isn’t trying to throw things off the rails!

  188. My most recent was baking an american beauty cake with my mother for family dinner a few weeks ago. I hadn’t baked with my mother in years. It was a wonderful throwback to my childhood :)

  189. My favorite memory is baking with my grandmother :)

  190. I wanted to make a souflee I found in a magazine and my grandmother took me to the grocery store right away to get all the ingredients. We got started as soon as we returned. I think I was 10 or 11 years old…it turned out beautifully! She believed we could do it and we did!

  191. When I was a little girl I would make hermits with my mom and my grammy. My grammy lived in MA (we lived in NJ) so when we would go up to MA for Thanksgiving, the first thing we would do when we got up there was make these hermit cookies. They are like molasses cookies with raisins and sugar drizzled on top. Now that my grammy passed away, my mom and I continue the tradition. It’s not thanksgiving unless we make hermits!

  192. Christmas cookie marathon with my family.

  193. I think it is always baking for Thanksgiving…I fret and stew but I always do it the night before so everything is as fresh as I can make it and I love sharing it with my family and my sister and her partner…feels good to share the love by giving something that tastes yummy!

  194. My favorite baking memory is when I learned to make cinnamon rolls and yeast rolls from my grandmother…who had made thousands of them for the kids in the school cafeteria over the years.

  195. My favorite memory is baking and decorating sugar cookies with my mom and brother. Mom would cut them out and bake them and then my brother and I got a chance to decorate them. There was more sugar on the cookie than in the cookie I would say!

    We would make those cut out cookies for every holiday and I still look forward to them.

  196. My favorite baking memory is actually how I discovered my passion for the art, or actually how my friend did. On my 29th birthday my lifelong friend brought my birthday gift in a bag that had a cupcake on the outside. She then expressed to me her OBSESSION with anything cupcake. I therefore decided that for her birthday, which is only about 2 months after mine, that I would make her some cupcakes. I started practicing, because I’m a perfectionist and wanted her cuppies to be AMAZING, and I fell in love. I ended up making her strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream and….pickle cupcakes. She llllooovvveess pickles. So much so that she used to smell like pickles when we were kids because she ate them so often. It has been a year and a half of baking now and I learn something new every day. I found my passion!

  197. I made your red velvet cake pops for a New Year’s get together and it sparked a great friendship with several of the people at the party since they were such a hit and a great conversation starter. That was almost 5 years ago and now we’re all married with kids. Love it!

  198. My favorite baking memory is from when my mom tried to teach me to make a blueberry pie. I made the crust and it turned out well if a little thick on the edges. I couldn’t wait to have some when I came home from work; however it was all gone. When I told my mom how bummed I was not to have some she admitted they threw it out. I had mixed up TBS and tsp and added 3 TBS of salt to the crust! It was pretty but inedible.

  199. I used to bake a lot with my Grandma before I moved away. It was really nice to get to spend some one on one time with her. I love her recipes.

  200. My favortie baking memories are when I was little, I used to love baking all kinds of stuff, specially around the holidays!! And now I’m making more memories with my boys every chance I get, and again, specially around the holidays and for birthdays, etc!!!

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