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.

A Hobby Turns Into A Business

In May of 2007 I was visiting a Hobby Lobby store in nearby Pekin, IL, and discovered a display case of decorated cakes along with advertising for their Wilton Cake Decorating classes. Cake decorating had long been a fascination for me and since I love crafting and creating and baking it seemed like a good idea to sign up for the beginner's course. Instantly I was hooked.

Since that time I have taken Wilton Courses 1, 2, 3, 4, and am to begin Course 5 next Monday. This also emboldened me to travel to the Chicago region to the Wilton School and take a course on How to Start a Cake Business, as well as additional courses through our local community college on how to start a catering business.

As I was taking cake decorating classes for my own personal enjoyment, things in my job began to fall apart and I eventually decided to leave my position to pursue other things. While exploring other things, cake-decorating became more and more important to me and soon the idea to begin a home-based bakery business developed. In less than a year I've made over 50 cakes and the business continues to grow, via word of mouth from my friends and customers.

I am grateful to my friends for their support and am constantly overwhelmed by the amount of serendipity out there that can lead us to wonderful moments, people, and discoveries.