High Time for Pies

July marks the beginning of pie season for me. For as long as I can remember this is the season when berries and cherries have to be picked and processed for baking. Certainly pies can be made anytime, since ready made crusts and canned pie fillings are always available in the grocery stores, but in my opinion for a truly fresh, once-a-year, mouth-watering, dessert experience, berry pies should be made, just shortly after berry picking.

This tradition began for me when I was a little girl. Each summer – in late June or early July, my brothers and I were invited to spend a week with my grandmother and grandfather Johnson at their little bungalow on Wildwood Drive in Ottumwa, Iowa. While the house was small, the yard was huge and I always marveled at how my grandparents gardened what seemed like an acre behind their home. Spring and summer time for them was dedicated to planting, growing, and putting away food for the year. An old habit, perhaps from their own childhoods. They retained a depression-era perspective on storing up for hard times, to the point that their basement contained a special room featuring floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with home-canned fruits, vegetables, sauces, jellies, relishes and God knows what else. So dedicated were they to this practice and a belief that they would perish without this food that they were able to calculate precisely how many plants were needed to produce enough for their family to enjoy all year. Grandma could tell you exactly how many green bean seeds to plant in order to have enough green beans canned for family meals through one year! And quite honestly there was nothing quite as wonderful as eating all that homegrown food at one of their Thanksgiving dinners. There was a pride and satisfaction in that food ,from having grown it all themselves, that made each dish taste all the better.

There was a division of labor in all of this effort. Grandma planned and helped plant and weed and cooked and canned. Grandpa did all the digging and planting, the majority of weeding and harvesting. I can still see my "Papa" as we called him, wearing his striped overalls (shirtless), a straw hat and hoeing the garden with sweat dripping off the end of his nose. And there was grandma in her little floral cotton dress and apron... white cotton anklets, tightly curled hair, running back and forth between kitchen and garden at a speed Superman would admire.
My brothers and I were each assigned a tree to pick. I still remember, as though it were yesterday, climbing into "my" cherry tree and being surrounded by the million bright red balls that I plucked as fast as I could. Sometimes I tried to count how many I’d pick and my brothers and I would try to see who could pick the fastest. In the end it was silly for we were all three expected to pick our trees clean. Whether we did it slowly or fast mattered not, the work had to be done.

Once the trees were picked we helped Grandma wash and pit the cherries. This task went surprisingly fast since she had an antique cherry pitting tool. We poured cherries into the spout of this gizmo as she cranked a handle and miraculously each cherry was split and pitted. Following this we were encouraged to go play as she made fresh pies for dinner. I wish now that I’d lingered in her kitchen, to learn how she baked those wonderful pies. She really had a talent for making show-quality pies, beautifully glazed and artfully decorated.

Years later when I moved to my own country home, I was thrilled to discover cherry and apple trees on the property. My grandparents had all passed on and I found myself longing to do my own gardening and pie-making. All those childhood experiences came back to me and it was as if my grandparents were at my side guiding me through the process. I was good at cherry picking, but the pie-baking skills I was lacking in. I decided the best way to learn that was to practice. I announced to my work colleagues that if anyone was interested in being my guinea pig, to bring me an empty pie plate and I would return it to them with a pie in it. I figured after making 3 or 4 pies I would have crust-making nailed. I also didn’t expect there to be wide spread interest in my invitation. To my surprise, every day for the next couple of weeks, I would come to work and find empty pie plates, with names taped on the bottom of the pans, sitting in front of my office door. Funnier still was the fact that work mates didn’t bring just one pie plate. Some brought 2 and 3! And some of the gentlemen asked if they could keep bringing me pie plates after their pie was gone. I had created monsters! Over the course of 2 weeks I think I made about 2 dozen pies and had tried several different pie crust recipes. In that short but harried time I gained a confidence in pie-making and speed in whipping them together. Mission accomplished.

So here it is again, July...pie time. My week has been spent picking and pitting cherries. On July 4th my husband and I enjoyed the first pie of the season. We sat in silence as we ate it, savoring it’s magic. "Just once a year?"... my husband said. "Yup" I replied. That’s what makes it all so special.

Recipe for My Mom’s Pie Dough:
2 cups + 4 table spoons of all purpose flour
2/3 cup of vegetable oil
4 tablespoons of cold water
1 teaspoon of salt.
Form dough into a round patty and roll out between sheets of waxed paper.

Pass It On

When my daughter was a mere three years old she enjoyed watching cooking shows on television and often wanted to participate in making supper with me. One time she had stayed overnight at her grandma and grandpa’s house and when I called to check on her I asked her what she was doing. She told me she learned how to make "bird’s nest soup" and Dad explained they’d been watching Julia Child and an Asian chef make the recipe. "I’m gowan to makit for you Mommy", she promised.

Yet another time, when she was quite small – perhaps five or six years old, it was mother’s day and I was awakened at 6:30 a.m. by her little voice saying "Surprise". As I opened my eyes, and my blurred vision slowly came into focus, there my little angel was standing holding a tray with scrambled eggs and toast and coffee! Then I realized her father was still asleep beside me and that this little genius had figured out how to do it all by herself. I thought about her height and how she must have labored to get up on the counter and into the cupboards to get the supplies she needed to make my breakfast. I thought of how she was barely tall enough to see into the frying pan, unless she’d been standing on something. I thought about how difficult it must have been for her to carry the tray of food and a hot drink, no less all the way upstairs to my bedroom. All the potential accidents she avoided and what kind of mess might be awaiting me in the kitchen.

I cried of course and put the tray on my lap and grabbed her and held on tight. She crawled in bed with me and helped me eat my breakfast, telling me everything she’d done to make it happen. The idea came to her from a television commercial. I loved her so much for doing this and at the same time wondered if she’d be trying to drive the car next.
Katie was always fun to cook with. Over the years as she grew up she helped me decorate holiday cookies, learned how to help grill meat on the barbecue, learned to make all of the family’s favorite dishes, and one Thanksgiving even got up at 5:00 o’clock with me to help make the Thanksgiving meal. She got a workout helping make the stuffing, preparing the turkey, and various dishes. When our company arrived she announced she’d made the entire meal. She’d had some help of course, but I was pleased to let her take the credit. I knew few of her peers shared such an interest and she was growing through all of this. Preparing herself for one day feeding others.

Another favorite memory of Katie cooking was when she decided to make our family recipe for Baklava and enter it in a cooking contest at our community’s annual homecoming festival. She won 1st place.

I don’t know how exactly this love of cooking was fostered in her, but it pleases me immensely to know that my girl can do more than boil water and eat instant or fast foods. More than this, she seems to really appreciate fine cooking. I think really it began by just including her in everything, having tea parties together and making a game out of making a meal. While I was absorbing myself in her world it appears she was being the wonderful little sponge that children can be and soaking up all she could to develop her own skills.

Recently she and Tom and I traveled to St. Louis for the weekend and while there ate at a wonderful Indian restaurant named Rasoi. Katie was excited about trying all the new foods and made a point of writing down some of the names of the dishes. A week passed, and I was missing her again, feeling as I always do that our time together had been much to short. I wondered if our weekend trip had been as meaningful for her as it had me. I opened up my e-mail and thrilled at finding a note from her and a picture. She had been experimenting. She had found recipes on the internet for two of the Indian dishes she’d enjoyed at Rasoi and so she made them for herself. She photographed them for me to see. I was so very proud for all her effort and inquisitiveness.

I think I must have done something right as a mother... at least I’d like to believe this. To me it’s a wonderful thing if a child can grow up being confident and capable in the kitchen; desires to try new things; and hungers to know and experience what life has to offer. One need not travel the other end of the earth (although that’s good too) to know something of the world. I hope that I’ve taught my daughter that food and cooking experiences can teach you about other worlds and even open doors. At least it has for me.

Graduation Daze

Well, I survived it... barely. Every cake-maker’s Olympics – graduation time! In one week I worked 57 hours with a team of 4 people to make perhaps 120 graduation cakes, maybe more. I lost count at some point. In between these were the other constants.. birthday and best wishes cakes for various occasions. I don’t know exactly how we did it and the amazing thing is that no two were alike. The week has ended with a cortisone shot to help the incessant cramping in my hand from carpal tunnel syndrome, and nightly dreams of frosting squirting from tubes, as I pipe "congratulations, congratulations, congratulations" over and over again.


Multiple high school colors, endless names, diplomas, graduation caps, stars, roses, edible senior portraits juxtaposed with baby pictures..... it was an experience I won’t forget. With each cake I felt I knew the graduate... the family... the weight of the accomplishment... I recalled my own daughter’s high school graduation and how we all felt. Throughout the ceremony I stared at this beautiful young woman who had once been my baby. She was all poise and grace. And still beneath that cap and gown I could see her as that tender infant I rocked to sleep; my precocious 3 year old who read books to her dolls; my darling eight year old companion who still wanted to grow up and be like me; and my sixteen year old rebel who experimented with hair color, cussing, and kissing boys. Throughout my daughter’s graduation my heart was breaking. I wanted to stand up and scream "Stop this madness!!! I’m not ready to let her go!!!" But then again, another look at those incredible blue eyes and all the hope and excitement that filled them.... how could I deny someone I loved this intensely all that life has to offer... college, marriage, career, babies, homemaking, travel, friends, exploration..... I too wanted it all for her, and so I sat there carefully concealing my agony, with the exception of the occasional tear that fell from the corner of my eyes.


It’s crazy I know, but my own life’s experiences somehow were woven into each one of those cakes and as I boxed them up and wrote their owners names upon the pricing stickers, I also attached my secret prayers. Prayers for each graduate and each parent. That life would be good to them. That these wonderful young people would come to know their strengths despite the humbling journeys that lie ahead. And that always they would know love.


One particular order struck my heart. A mother whose heart was all over her sleeve. She ordered two cakes. One with his school colors of red and white with a graduation cap and "Congratulations Christopher" on top. And a second, in pastel blue, coral, sea foam green, and pale yellow... that said "Congratulations Christopher and Meredith... We will miss you..."
I couldn’t help but ask.... "What’s happening to Christopher?" "He graduates this weekend and then he and his fiancé are moving to Florida." she replied. There was such pride and such pain in her response. A mother’s curse... We raise them up well and give them the world and then they take it and leave us. All we have left are our memories and prayers that they won’t forget us... and the sweets.... We serve them sweets at the time of our greatest pain and their greatest joy as they step away from their childhoods. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Meeting with Masters

I’m relatively new to cake decorating. One year to be exact. I never imagined that signing up for an introductory cake decorating class at Hobby Lobby would in less than a year’s time lead to a new career. I initially signed up because I was blue and needed to occupy my mind with something aesthetic and constructive, rather than wallow in negative thoughts. I was having depression over my job and a growing unrest that I felt there. The workplace and mission had changed and I was not on board with the changes. I also began to look at my colleagues differently. I no longer wanted what they wanted, nor could I find myself able to be what they required me to be. I fought this because I had invested much in my career. 23 years as a museum educator and 15 years at one place. Retirement was within site. But one thing was more in my forefront view than retirement. I was unhappy and needed to change. There was no way I could stay there another 12 years. If I did I would die of insanity or a broken heart.

As I developed skills in cake decorating I began to fantasize about making cakes for a living and I determined to do it as a side-line, to raise extra cash, and channel my creative energies. I thought having my own enterprise away from my full time employment would help me to compartmentalize my troubles, but the toxic environment of the workplace I’d been battling became more so. I became so tormented spiritually that ultimately, I had to leave. After a month of doing virutally nothing but crying and cleaning house, my husband and I took a trip around Lake Michigan. It was a much needed and healing experience. During the trip I decided that when we returned home I would work on identifying my skill sets and focus on rebuilding me. Upon my return the calls – from friends, began to come in, and suddenly I was making cakes for people and getting paid. God had opened a window for me.

It has now been 8 months since I formed Whisk Away Bakery. There have been orders every month and some most unexpected turns. Just this last month I was able to obtain employment at the local County Market Bakery and now I make oodles of cakes every time I work. I’m learning volumes and almost feel like I’m being paid to go to school. Even though the grocery store sells "kit cakes" and is perhaps a bit limited in it’s flexibility in designs, I have been fortunate to learn how decorated cakes are mass produced; what the most popular motifs and decorations are; how to price, label, and package cakes; how to airbrush cakes; and all about marketing strategies and techniques. It’s very valuable schooling.

Just before I was hired at County Market I’d had my first wedding cake order and was a nervous wreck over the affair. Several friends kept saying "you should go see Charlotte", an elderly woman in our community who is a master at making cakes. I kept putting it off, but as luck would have it I ran into her daughter one day when I was buying baking supplies and her daughter, who worked at the grocery store, said "It looks like you’re baking a cake. You should talk to my mother." So I did. I looked her up and introduced myself and told her about my worries regarding the wedding cake project. She offered me the reassurance I was seeking and told me to come see her when I’d gotten through it. A month later I finally had a day to myself and so I called her and she invited me over to her house. I love her to pieces and think that she is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met. We spent 3 hours talking non-stop about cake designs and how she made them. She told me how she’d had 8 children and after the last one was born decided she’d better find a new hobby! She also kept saying she was a frustrated artist. She always wanted to paint or sculpt but never felt confident ... but when making cakes, she found she could manipulate frostings with some talent and in time she became somewhat of a local legend. The most amazing thing about Charlotte is that she is self-taught. Hearing her story gave me courage and helped me to realize that one need not rely on schooling or an institution to form you and make you a professional. Being professional – being a master at something can be done individually but it requires determination, focus, tons of practice, a willingness to learn from failure and accept some vulnerability, time, and faith in yourself.

Charlotte shared her secrets with me over a glass of iced tea and before I left presented me with a collection of cake decorator’s books she no longer wished to keep. She invited me to call her if I needed to borrow anything and we agreed to keep in touch. I will always treasure this meeting and the sisterhood of cake decorators out there. She gave me much more than baking and decorating tips.

I have only known one other Charlotte in my life but in the next week I would meet my third one. This one, also is a cake decorator. This Charlotte is my supervisor at the County Market and she too is wonderful and an amazing self-taught cake decorator. Both Charlottes have been making cakes for over 40 years and have tackled some phenomenal requests. They talk about these experiences with a calmness that I cannot fathom.

I am fortunate to have these two wonderful mentors in my life and it’s my mission to learn all that I can from them and to make them proud. Knowing them, has taken away all the sting of my departure from my former job. Their gentle ways have given me confidence not just in my work, but in myself. I have a mantra again... "If I think it and I want it, I can be it."
I am in a new world now. A world of making ephemeral, edible art for those celebrating the happy moments and milestones of their lives, and it is good work.

The Hope Chest Recipe

I am perhaps one of the last generation of girls who kept a "hope chest" -- a trunk filled with things that I would one day use in my own home. I began putting things away for my future at the age of 14, at my mother's urging. She had done it when she was young and probably thought that involving me in the ancient custom would occupy my adolescent mind and keep me out of trouble. Indeed it was a good idea. Fourteen is such an awkward age. Not quite woman, not quite child. What young girl doesn't struggle with rapid physical metamorphosis, mood swings, and the need to feel grown-up? Mom told me about the kinds of things she put in her hope chest...things like linens she'd embroidered, nic nacs, dishes, glassware, afghans, etc. So I started one and it was great fun. I took the hope chest project very seriously. It made me think about owning a home of my own one day and what I would need to be self sufficient. It made me consider what my own style was and encouraged the notion that I didn't have to live my life like my mother. That my life would be, could be, whatever I designed it to be.

In the beginning I taught myself how to embroider and began embroidering some linens for the hope chest. I also wove some silly little hot pads with one of those nylon loop & pot-holder weaving frames. Eventually when I was a little older and started earning money from babysitting and later on from waitressing, I started buying things like dishes, silverware, bedding, mixing bowls and cooking utensils, pictures and vases. Before too long there was no room in the chest to add any more items, so I began collecting boxes to put my things in, and store away in a closet, until the day I would leave home.

One day, while walking down the street I was passing a neighbor's house. Her name was Mrs. Van Tyle. She was an elderly widow and had always been the sweetest soul in the neighborhood. She was out in her yard pulling weeds. At this point I was a junior in high school and beginning to get serious about going to college. I had started looking at everything around me differently, knowing I would soon be saying goodbye to my childhood. That included Mrs. Van Tyle. She had been so good to us kids. In summers when we would play outdoors from sun-up until sundown, we often ran up and down the alley and across the neighbor's yards playing hide and seek, having scavenger hunts or playing cowboys and Indians. Mrs. Van Tyle would sit on her back porch and watch us and often would call us up to the house and present us with glasses of ice cold lemonade and her famous sugar cookies. The cookies were always delicious and she was an angel for refreshing us and asking us about our play. She loved the neighborhood children and it was not until I was an adult that I later realized that she might have been really lonely and we were a source of entertainment for her.

That day when I saw her pulling weeds I got this idea that I should tell her about my hope chest and ask her for her sugar cookie recipe. I told her how much I'd always loved those cookies and the lemonade. Tears came to her eyes and she reached for my hand and said "my dear I'd be delighted to." It occurred to me that after all those years of enjoying her hospitality that we may not have thanked her and had taken her goodness for granted. To this day I still have the little index card with her handwriting on it. I cherish it and would be lost without that recipe and the link to my childhood. Many of the other things that were in my hope chest are now gone -- linens became worn out or just plain out of fashion. Many of the dishes and glasses became chipped or broken over the years and had to be replaced. All those things had short lives really. They helped me get my start as a homemaker. But the recipe... well, now that was something different.

Mrs. Van Tyle has since passed away, but I think if she could know how that recipe has served me she would be so pleased. It is an old standby. I made that sugar cookie recipe countless times throughout my daughter's childhood for school bake sales, brownie treats, parties, and after-school snacks. Every Christmas (30 so far!) that is the recipe I use to make cookies to give to all my friends. And now that I'm running Whisk Away Bakery, it is Mrs. Van Tyle's sugar cookie recipe that I make for all my clients' cookie orders. Each time I make a cookie it is decorated for whatever season, holiday, or event is being celebrated. This little recipe turned out to be my most prized hope chest item, and while sweet to taste, grows much sweeter in my heart with each passing year.

Amish Friendship Bread

Have you ever had a friend offer you a "starter bag" of Amish Friendship Bread? Well, I have... many times over the years and each time I have to laugh. The first thought you have after eating this sweet bread is how wonderful, and the thought of having a starter of your own to make fresh bread from every ten days is exciting. You start having fantasies about baking all of your own breads, which leads to other crazy thoughts like growing all of your own food and churning your own butter, and some day while your walking about a field of wheat in your Amish dress, there coming over a hill will be a young Harrison Ford, in his "plain" clothes (right off the screen from the movie "Witness") and he's making eyes at you..... So that's how you get sucked in. And truly it is great tasting bread and it does make you feel good to share it with friends.

But what your friends who offer you the starter don't tell you is that each week you must give away 3 cups of starters to other friends, and before you know it you run out of friends and none of the people you are friends with will take any more starter because they're in a pickle of their own trying to find friends to give the stuff too.

It had been years since I'd made any Amish Friendship bread and then suddenly one day at work, in the employee lounge, there it was. A sweet little note and several bags of starter sitting on a table, next to samples of Amish Friendship bread, begging one and all to take the stuff home. I remembered that I enjoyed the bread and I thought... oh.... what the heck and grabbed a bag.

It is now one month later and I have given away starter to the few friends I have left and my husband and I have eaten the bread pretty much everyday, off and on all day and I can feel and see that I've put on some extra pounds. I experimented a bit with some of the variations you can play with. For instance you can add different flavors of puddings and nuts, etc. to change the bread. A particular favorite is the addition of lemon pudding and poppy seeds, and another is pistachio pudding and chopped pecans. But seriously I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up. I really don't want to go up another pant size.

Despite my words of warning however I do encourage everyone to try this. It can be a lot of fun and with strawberry season upon us, this bread goes great with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Attached is a link to a website with the starter recipe, as well as some suggestions for variations. You won't regret making it, but you will need a lot of friends, and you will also have to tell yourself at some point when to bake up all of the starter and be done with it, so you can try other things.

Starter recipe: http://www.armchair.com/recipe/bake002.html

The Art of Sugar Crafting

This week I completed a course on Gumpaste flowers ala the Wilton method. It was fun, but hard work and at times quite frustrating. The flowers were exciting to make but so delicate that the least little bump or wrong move could cause them to break. Several times in class I caught myself holding my breath as I attached the fragile blossoms to the florist wires. Our class instructor, Debra, kept reminding us that practice makes perfect, and I know she is right. Some of my flowers were too thin, thus the breakage. In time I'll master the appropriate shapes and thicknesses. But for a first effort I don't think I did too badly.

Throughout the afternoon as I worked on my daffodils, lilies, and other cake class homework assignments, I kept looking out the window to study the real daffodils growing in our yard. As much as I enjoy making the simulated flowers, there really is nothing like the real thing. I wonder how on earth it is that humans evolved from killing and eating wild things like mastadons during prehistoric times to present times developing the skills, and notions that they could craft flowers from sugar! How amazing the human mind is.

Isn't it something that we can live in such a world where food can be art. This is one of the things I love about cake decorating -- making edible art. I also think what I've grown to love the most about taking cake decorating classes is connecting with kindred spirits who enjoy learning about the intricacies of various techniques, being creative, and all of the sharing that goes on. It's fun to hear what others are doing with their cake decorating skills, be it professional, as a hobbyist, or for personal use.