The Aroma of Baking...the Fragrance of Love
What a fragrance...the aroma of cookies baking. My house is redolent with the scents of chocolate and lemon...Chocolate Layer Cookies and Lemon Bars, with Cheesecake Dreams and Chocolate Walnut Crumb Bars to come tomorrow. I love baking. For me, it is totally an act of love...using longtime family recipes, handed down from my mother and grandmother, from my aunt's and long-ago neighbors...precious people who populated my life through the years and whose presence I feel each time I don my adoption and begin the prestidigitation, the alchemy...which turns plain, ordinary ingredients into melt-in-your-mouth treats, to be enjoyed by family and friends throughout the holidays. Several years ago, when I was putting family recipes into a book for my eldest granddaughter, I came across a prayer, a blessing for a cook/baker to say...to breathe...before beginning the work, during the ritual of washing hands. It occupies page one of my own cookbook and has helped the act o...