Sweet memories

Yesterday as I was baking, I was struck by how calm and content I am in the kitchen. I think it's in large part due to the fact that I'm reminded of my mom. My mom passed away in 2007 and ever since, I'm reminded of her most when I'm in the kitchen. What's funny is that I rarely cooked with her, but I loved watching her navigate the kitchen and come up with new dishes. She wasn't really a baker- in fact she hated how exacting baking can be, but she loved to experiment with new dishes.

I didn't really start cooking and baking until I moved out of the house. Occasionally I helped my mom bake muffins or a cake here and there. One of my most vivid baking memories is of my brother and I on a snow day off from school. I must have been in jr. high and he was probably still in pre-school. We were home alone and bored, watching snow pour down outside. I suddenly got the idea that we should bake a cake, but since my mom rarely baked, we didn't have the supplies needed at the house. So my brother and I searched the house for every last piece of change we could find, bundled up in our warmest clothes and snow boots, and trekked through the snow to the Clemens Market down the street. When we came home we baked a sweet pineapple up-side-down cake and surprised our parents when they came home from work. My brother and I joke because my mom was quoted in the newspaper when she was interviewed about her cooking as saying, "My daughter Christina likes to bake cakes on snow days." I guess my one and only snow day cake left made a good impression on her :)

So yesterday I baked a half batch of Shorties and a full batch of Treasure Chest Cookies and now my kitchen is full of cookies. I need to pawn them off on people because I cannot have all these cookies sitting on my table! Both batches came out well but I'm still getting used to my new oven. This is an old building and unfortunately the floors are a bit slanty so I've been noticing some of my baking coming out...slanted. I find it helps if I turn the cookie sheets about half way through, but it certainly is a pain. Oh well. I don't think it's going to get fixed any time soon!