Grandma's Baking

As I am getting cookies and treats ready for tonight's Santa Claus parade, I find I am missing my grandma. Her number one love language was through food. She cooked and baked constantly, and remembered everything that you loved.

Every summer we would come to stay, and she would feed me tapioca pudding until I was sick of it. She would let us put sugar on our cereal when mom wasn't looking. She would make melt-in-your-mouth shortbread cookies (pressed with a fork), and lots of rice krispy squares. It was as if she had been preparing all winter for when we would come in July.

I remember all of the quirky things she did. She used a spatula to get every bit of mashed potatoes out of the pot - and she always whipped her potatoes with a hand mixer to make them extra creamy. She would poke toothpicks into the top of any dessert before wrapping it plastic wrap so as to avoid smearing the icing. And she wouldn't let a bit of food go to waste.

It certainly helps to remember her when I have many of the tools that were from her kitchen: measuring cups, spoons, a rolling pin, and even her aprons. She always had a cutting board hanging on her kitchen wall that had a cat painted on it, and it is now in my home kitchen.

And, to top it off, the very chocolate cake recipe that I use almost every week for customers is the one that she used to bake for us.

So tonight, after the parade, family and friends will enjoy hot cocoa (with extra chocolate and marshmallows), festive rice krispy squares, and extra chocolatey haystack cookies.

I will make sure to lick the spoon clean in honour of my grandma.

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Grandma once said, "Your grandfather never understood how a woman needs chocolate."

Amen, grandma, amen.