Happy lil ❤’s are baking ~ Crafty Moms Share!

This month we have a wonderful treat ~ guest posts for Happy lil ❤’s are baking ~ from some wonderful blogger friends! Starting with my good friend Carrie from Crafy Moms Share. Carrie’s daughter, Hazel and my Dino Boy are postcard pen pals and they are also both starting Waldorf school in the not too distant future. And they both love baking!

This is Carrie from Crafty Moms Share. Kelly has asked me to fill in for Happy lil ❤’s are baking. I am more than honored to be here.  I hope you will stop by Crafty Moms Share some time and say hi!

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For as long as I can remember, I have loved to cook and bake. I remember making “soup” for my family. I literally think I cut up some carrots and celery (or had help) and put them in water. I somehow remember my parents making my older sisters eat it. I grew up baking. I loved to bake cookies, cakes, pies, bread, basically everything. When I was in third grade my mother went back to work full time, so she came up with an idea to share the housework and cooking. Since there are five of us (three daughters, plus mom and dad) she had each of us take a turn cooking dinner Monday through Friday for the family. Then on the weekends we were a bit on our own for figuring out food. I started cooking dinner once a week for my family at age 8. Oh, and it was our responsibility to fill out the grocery list so we would have the ingredients we would need for our dinner each week. (We also had to clean one main room of the house weekly with inspections by the person taking over the room the following week and had a schedule for washing dishes and putting dishes away.) Somehow with all this responsibility I still loved cooking and baking.

Me on my parents’ deck with the view of the marsh and Cape Cod Bay–taken by my daughter at age 2 1/2

This was long ago. Now my parents are living on Cape Cod in the house my grandparents built for their retirement. This house holds so many memories since I spent many of my school vacations there with my grandparents. My grandmother always remembered which foods each of liked and disliked and planned for our visits accordingly. She always baked your favorite desserts as well. One of my favorite times to be there was in June as my grandfather’s strawberries would be ripe. My grandfather and I shared many favorite desserts including angel food cake. My grandmother would often make it when I was coming, which of course made my grandfather happy. Then in June we would change it into strawberry shortcake with the angel food cake. As I got older my grandmother would sometimes just have the cake mix for me and I would do the baking or we would bake it together.

Well this June my daughter and I were visiting my parents and the strawberries (the first year my father has grown them) were very much in season! So I decided to pass on the angel food cake tradition. My mother and I were trying to figure out what to use for strawberry shortcake since we are both watching our weight and trying to lose. We came up with angel food cake. We had strawberry shortcake almost every one of the four nights we were there, so the calories were adding up.

My daughter giving me a look for taking her picture.

My daughter (who is named for my grandmother in this story) and I started making the cake.It is very easy to make. You just add one and a quarter cup of water to the mix and beat with an electric mixer to get the air in it. (My mother has made them from scratch for me and it uses a dozen egg whites.) My mother has inherited all of my grandmother’s things as well as having downsized from our house growing up (and lived in a condo in between), so she has been trying to get rid of things. Well she has boxes packed up to give away but wants to go through them once more. She is pretty sure that is where her tube pan is if she still has one. Instead we followed the instructions for two loaf pans. 

Once the batter was whipped, you just put it in the pan and stuck it in the oven following the instructions of baking it at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes. When the pans come out of the oven they have to be turned on their sides. The tube pan has to be turned upside down. I remember my grandmother always balanced it on a bottle–using the hole of the pan around the top of the bottle. You let it cool there.

 My father who doesn’t usually like angel food cake that much loved this one. We made it with the fresh picked strawberries (sliced and sprinkled with some sugar to get them nice and juicy left out at room temperature) and homemade whipped cream.

It was delicious!! My daughter now has the memories of having angel food cake strawberry shortcake made with her grandfather’s strawberries just like I did!

Ohhh, yum! And I loved reading about Carrie’s family baking tradition ~ how special to be passing it on to Hazel!

And now, we can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to in the kitchen with your kids!

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Happy baking, Kelly 

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