Kookulash

I suppose that baking is in my blood. My Grandpa Miller owned a bakery. That is where he met my Grandma Miller. My mom certainly inherited the baking gene. She loved baking cookies, cakes, cinnamon rolls, bread, coffee cakes, apple kuchen, and lots of other treats. She loved it when each of her grandchildren were old enough to go to the lazy susan in her kitchen in search of cookies that she had made for them. It was one of the first things each of her grandkids learned to do at her house. Inside the door of that lazy susan were ice cream pails full of Grandma's yummy cookies.

Once when Danielle was probably about 4 years old, we were on our way to see my parents for the weekend. We stopped at Eric's parents in Rochester. Eric's mom offered Danielle some of her homemade cookies. Danielle responded, "No thanks. I'm waiting for the cookies at the farm!" I remember telling my mom that when we got to the farm and she just laughed. Well, she laughed and offered Danielle some cookies, of course!

Evan and Lauren also learned pretty quickly that Grandma always had cookies on hand. And just in case they hadn't eaten enough while we were there, Grandma would always send some home with us too. My kids liked to say that Grandma added the secret ingredient of love in her cookies.

I liked to tease my kids that I had a great memory before having them. If I couldn't remember something, I'd tell them that each baby I had took a bit of my brain. One day a few years ago I said that to Evan. He responded that with as many babies as Grandma had, the only part of her brain that must be left was the cookie making part! Of course, knowing Evan the way I do, I'm sure to him that was the most important part of Grandma's brain!

I don't make a lot of cookies throughout the year, but at Christmastime, I go a little overboard. I make and freeze about 10 different kinds of cookies in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The funny thing is that not one of them is a recipe my mom ever used. The last Christmas that my dad was alive, one of the varieties I made was Peppermint Melt-Aways. As the name suggests, they are little buttery peppermint flavored cookies with peppermint frosting and finely chopped candy canes sprinkled on top. They basically melt in your mouth. There was a plate of them sitting on the kitchen table at the farm that Christmas, and my dad would reach out and eat one after another of them. At that point, he really wasn't eating much of anything any more, so to see him eat those cookies did my heart good. Apparently Evan noticed too, because each of the last 3 years, he has insisted I make them again, "because Grandpa loved them!"

The Christmas cookie that everyone asks me to make each year are my Cookie Dough Truffles. They are more of a candy than a cookie, but they are addicting. That is part of the reason I only make them once a year.

But I must admit that my baking and cooking skills have developed over the years. The first recipe I remember making as a kid was my own creation. I called it Kookulash (pronounced coo-cull-osh). Honestly, until titling this post, I'm not sure I ever before wrote down the word Kookulash before so I had to think about how to spell it. I will now give away my secret recipe for Kookulash. It is made of crushed Ritz Crackers and water stirred together. I know you are all wondering why you didn't think of this tasty creation on your own. Either that or you are thinking that the name Kookulash is appropriate because only a Kook would come up with it. I don't recommend trying that recipe.

My sister Char got an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas one year. This was one of the original Easy Bake Ovens. It was a bluish green color and came with it's own cookbook. We made a ton of the chocolate cakes out of that recipe book. Somehow I ended up with that cookbook over the years. But I have the chocolate cake recipe memorized. I still love the taste of that cake. But always make it from scratch. The packages of Easy Bake Oven Cake Mix they sell are nasty!

That Easy Bake Oven inspired Char, Mike and I to have our own Bake-Off a few times. This came from watching the Pillsbury Bake-Off every year with Mother. I still remember that once a year As The World Turns was interrupted in order for the Pillsbury Bake-Off to be televised. It was so fun to watch and I dreamed of being there one day. The only Easy Bake-Off creation of mine that I remember didn't go quite as I planned. I can't remember all the ingredients I used, but the main two were marshmallows and green food coloring. I pushed the little pan into the Easy Bake oven and couldn't wait for the finished product. Watching thru the window, I saw the marshmallows start to rise from the heat. How cool, it was rising like a cake. Only, it didn't stop! The marshmallows puffed up more and more and I knew I had to get my creation out of the Easy Bake Oven. Well, as I pushed it through to the cooking area, a lot of the marshmallow fluff was scraped off and landed on the inside of the Easy Bake Oven. Needless to say, I didn't win that Bake-Off. And Char and Mike named my creation for me: Green Slime! By the way, if you think that conventional ovens were tough to clean before the self clean feature was added, I have to tell you that it's a piece of cake compared to trying to clean the inside of an Easy Bake Oven. Or perhaps I should say, a piece of green slime! Putting this down in words just made me think of an invention to make my million dollars: A self cleaning Easy Bake Oven!

Today, there are tons of cooking shows on TV. In fact there is the Food Network. Evan loves to watch that channel. He then likes to critique  my cooking, by telling me things like my vegetables aren't uniformly chopped. I always tell him that if he can do a better job, he is welcome to do the cooking. He and Lauren also like to try to arrange their food on their dinner plates the way that they have seen on Food Network.

Dani and Evan both like to cook and bake. Many mornings, Evan will make muffins or cinnamon or caramel rolls. He claims he wants to own a bakery some day. I've tasted his baking and I think he might be onto something. I sure hope he'll give his own mom a discount! I'm sure he'd never hire me to work for him. Especially if I shared my Kookulash and Green Slime recipes with him.