credit: Me and My Green Bin

Growing up in the early 1960s, and being a kind of girly-girl, I do remember I liked my food pink. And sugary. When standing in line with my mom at Acme Supermarket, the impulse buy of choice near the cash register was those awful (to me now) pink marshmallow cookies with white coconut sprinkles. This was before red dye #2 was banned.

My mother, Shirley, and me in her state-of-the-art kitchen, 1957.

But at Christmas time, we made cookies. Mom did like to bake, if not actually cook. (Hey, it was the Atomic Age, and she had better things to do, like paint!) One of my favorites from that era was candy cane cookies. We had to divide the dough, and color one half. Then keep it moist until we twisted the braids together and curved them into the cane hook. Some baking, and voila! This was a cookie that actually tasted as good as it looked, as opposed to sand tarts. For all the glitter and sprinkles I shook onto them, they were always a letdown to me after they came off the sheet.

I no longer bake anything remotely like the candy cane cookie, since I have gotten much healthier in my eating habits. But a recent call for baking memories from one of my favorite blogs, A Hundred Years Ago, got me thinking about these cookies, and I realize that they probably still influence me today, in my art, if not my baking.

Happy Holidays to all!

I want to credit a fellow blogger for her contribution to the candy cane cookie. I shared her photo of the original recipe. Read her post for more on this classic!