Cooking with Dee

Every year come September, a large package would arrive from my great-great Uncle Ernest in Switzerland. It remained unopened until Christmas day. Then the decorative tin inside would remain sealed until we all wrote our thank-you notes. When the gorgeous Lebkuchen was finally opened, it was quite stale, but what flavors!

I grew up with the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. As a young girl I would rather bake a spice cake from Duncan Hines with my Mom’s cream cheese frosting than a chocolate cake. There’s a specialty store about a mile from here that carries Lebkuchen during the holidays. It’s very fresh and since I pay for it I don’t need to write anyone a thank-you note! I bought it as gifts one year and my husband and his family all hated it and gave it back to me – it was too spicy for them. It all depends on what you grew up with.

Mom started out doing turkey for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, then early on she decided to go back to her British traditions with prime rib and gravy, Yorkshire pudding and the whole spread. Sometimes we had trifle for dessert but usually several multi-hour baking sessions with all the girls yielded our favorites: mincemeat tarts (one year Mom and her sister Lorna made their own mincemeat but it’s been Crosse & Blackwell ever since); date squares; Scandinavian cookies with strawberry jam; Snickerdoodles; and apple shortbreads. One year I researched and found a recipe for chocolate-hazelnut panforte and made six of them, most mailed off as gifts. That recipe I can find by Googling and is a keeper.

Christmas morning began with Hungarian Coffee Cake, a pull-apart yeast bread with sugar and cinnamon and nuts that is incredibly delicious. I really don’t bake but the other women in my family do, and I may be able to unearth some recipes in the months that remain before the hectic holiday season.

Cheers, Dee

When I was eight years old my mother dropped me off with my younger sister (age 6) at the town library every Saturday while she ran her errands. We were very into plays and putting on performances (a play, ballet recital, even me playing the violin) but could only find musty books in this small venue so turned toward acting out Charles Schulz’ Peanuts strips. We made my baby brother some dog ears and so he was always Snoopy, somehow I was always cast as Lucy (I have to look into that one), and my sister played everyone else.

Now we needed something else to do in the Library, and I found The Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook. I kept it for three weeks until they called Mom and told me it was overdue to the tune of thirty-odd cents. So my birthday was coming up and lo and behold, I received the book as a gift. I was in hog heaven. Of course my grandfather prefaced everything I made with the word “suicide.” Suicide Carrot Curls, Suicide Kookie Kat Sundae, you get the drift.

We started planning lavish birthday parties for our brother’s birthdays. Two I especially recall were the first, a King and Queen’s Ball, complete with the Castle Cake, tagboard headdresses for the girls with a chiffon scarf trailing from each, and tagboard “crowns” for the boys, covered in tin foil with gumdrops on each point.

Another year was a pirate theme, with eye patches, tri-cornered hats and a treasure cake, plus a hunt for buried treasure. Oh, and everyone got a tagboard sword wrapped in tin foil.

My sister Alison would get so nervous in the days preceding our special events that she would actually break out in hives! Oh, the pressure to deliver for a three year-old birthday boy.

For this experience I have to thank Mom and Alison, Kevin (aka Snoopy), and the Barker Library. It’s been many years since I’ve printed tickets to the really big show in the basement at the House on the Hill, but I remember it as if it were yesterday.

Cheers, Dee

p.s. Joanie, please don’t let Aunt Lorna read this or she’ll cry like she always did when Dancing Bear appeared on Captain Kangaroo.