Baking with Gram

May 26, 2012, 9:11 am
Filed under: baking, books, family, gratitude, kids | Tags: baking, batter, books, family, favourite recipes, food, Gram, great-grandparents, Home, kids, Lake of the Woods, life, memories, patience, pyrex bowls, pyrex nesting bowls, raw eggs, recipe, wooden spoon

Those were the days. You could lick the spoon, clean off the beaters and no one ever said “No! You’ll get sick from raw eggs!”.

I used to spend a month every summer at my grandparents house in the Lake of the Woods region. They would take us to the beach, fishing on the lake, blueberry picking and I loved it! Now that I have 2 kids of my own, we travel there every year to visit their great-grandparents. I look back fondly on those days and hope to be able to create memories that my boys will cherish, too.

Some of my best memories of those summer days are the times I spent baking with Gram. She taught me how to make pies, cookies, muffins, and butter tarts. I remember her original cookbooks, all worn, yellowed and sometimes sticky; the hand-written recipes for some of my favourites. The coloured Pyrex nesting bowls and the well-worn wooden spoon. She always wore an apron and made it all seem effortless: mixing the ingredients, timing the baking, even the cleanup. I would help measure and stir and then lick the batter off the spoon, mixers and out of the bowl! Delicious goodness. (I still prefer uncooked batter to the finished product and my recipes never seem to make a full batch!) I was never told to “just eat one” or “save some for later.” It was pure pleasure!

Over the years, I collected Gram’s recipes and must admit, they are still my favourites.

Now that I have kids of my own, we often bake together: muffins, banana bread, cookies, weekend waffles or pancakes. But only recently have I given them the utensils to lick clean! There’s a lot of deep breathing involved as I’m not as patient as my Gram was – the flour all over the floor and counters, the fingers always reaching or grabbing for something – but I try to relax and enjoy our time together. It’s great to have home-made treats for lunches and snacks, knowing love was an essential ingredient.

I hope my boys will look back fondly on these times spent together or at least think of me when they order pancakes at a restaurant or buy a muffin to go with their morning coffee!