One of the ways both my sister and I remember mom is through her baking. There were several classic cookies, and similar treats, she made every year. Neither of us makes the whole collection, but we both have settled into a couple favorites.

For me they have become something I take around to share with friends. Which had led to lots of requests to share recipes. Since mom shared the recipes freely I figured I’d do the same for the ones I make all the time.

Fudge Nut Bars (without nuts)

These are really a year round favorite, but at Christmas usually our households will go through several trays.

Ingredients

Bars:

• 1 Cup Butter
• 2 Cups Brown Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 2 Tsp Vanilla
• 2 ½ cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups rolled oats

To make bars GF:

• Replace flour with 2 ½ cups all-purpose GF flour.
• Add 1 tsp Xanthan Gum
• Make sure to use GF oats.

Topping:

• 12 ounces chocolate chips
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 2 tbl butter, melted
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla

Instructions

Topping:

Mix chocolate pieces, condensed milk, butter, and salt in double boiler (or heat in microwave using 30 second bursts). Stir until smooth. Add in vanilla when done heating.

Bars:

Preheat oven to 350°

1. Cream together butter and brown sugar.
2. Add eggs and vanilla.
3. Add dry ingredients to creamed ingredients.
4. Spread two-thirds of mixture on bottom of 15 x 10-inch jelly roll pan, pressing into all the corners.
5. Cover with topping.
6. Drop remaining oatmeal mix on top and swirl over topping.
7. Bake at 350° 25-30 minutes.

Christmas Tree Almond Press Cookies

These require a cookie press, and can actually be made in many colors and shapes – but in our family the almond ones were nearly always Christmas tree shaped. See picture at the start of the recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp almond extract
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 4 cups flour
• Green food coloring (Wilton Kelly Green was Mom’s clear preference)
• Decorations if desired.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400°

1. Cream butter until very soft.
2. Work in sugar, then egg, then vanilla, then almond
3. Sift together dry ingredients and add gradually.
4. Color as desired. Don’t fear over mixing, make sure the color is what you want and evenly distributed.
5. Form cookies with press on an ungreased baking sheet. Decorate if desired.
6. Bake at 400° for 8-10 minutes.
7. Cool for a minute on the tray, and then transfer carefully to a wire rack until cool.

While for much of my life my mother did not like to talk about her own birthday, she loved to celebrate mine, my sister’s, her grandchildren’s, all were cause for her to bake a cake, or some other marker, to share with our friends. But my mother never ate those cakes: she was allergic to wheat.

She baked a lot at other times as well: wedding cakes for family and friends, pies and cheese cakes for holidays, mountains of cookies for the annual Christmas open house, and snacks for her students just because they might need a pick me up. Through all that baking, mom taught me that baking was something you did for other people. It wasn’t her intention, but it was what I learned. One of my first memories of baking myself was making an Angel Food Cake for my grandfather.

And so I only bake for myself once a year: to celebrate my birthday. This year’s cake was adapted from one in The Great British Baking Show: Love to Bake (which needs adaption as it’s written for a British audience and so has different flour, sugar, measurements, and nomenclature from US-centric cookbooks.)

I’ll get back to my series on writing for developers and technical consultants soon. But the next couple of pieces are still coming together. Sometimes editing take awhile.

Turns out if you go Googling for Drupal cake you get ideas for how to make a yellow or white cake and decorate it with a Drupal logo. There are some notable counter examples, but I wanted something with more Drupal baked in.

So I made a Chocolate Blue Velvet Cake with a Drupal logo in blueberries.

This recipe is derived from All Cake’s Considered’s Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake (if you’re an NPR-nerd you should buy a copy but it is also available in its entirety from the Internet Archive – I assume legally).

Of course hers is red, and I wanted blue. But since my actual inspiration came from people providing recipes (mostly bad ones) for baby shower cakes getting suggestions about how much food coloring to use wasn’t hard. So a little marriage of ideas and you have Chocolate Blue Velvet Drupal Cake.

Ingredients

Cake:

• 2 Sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 ¼ cups sugar
• 1 ¼ cups brown sugar
• 6 large eggs at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ cup Dutch process cocoa
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 ounce Blue icing coloring (my version used food coloring but didn’t have quite the color I wanted.  Icing coloring is usually stronger so this should get you closer).

Icing:

• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 2 8-ounce packages cream cheese at room temperature
• 32-ounces of confectioners’ (powdered) sugar.
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 package of fresh Blueberries

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F
2. Cream the butter and then gradually add the sugars beating well as you go.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each.
4. Add the vanilla extract and beat for another couple of minutes.
5. In a separate bowl combine and lightly mix the dry ingredients.
6. Alternate adding roughly ⅓ of the dry mixture followed by ⅓ of the sour cream, beating well after each addition, until all of both are fully incorporated.
7. Add the coloring, and continue to beat well.  After a minute stop the mixer and using a spatula to get any unevenly dyed batter off the sides and bottom, and then beat until the color is even.
8. Pour the batter into a pair of well greased 8 or 9-inch round cake pans, and place them in the oven so they have as similar of conditions as possible.
9. Bake for 45 minutes or until the cake tests done.
10. Cool the layers in their pans for 10 minutes and then remove from their pans carefully.  Let them cool to room temperature.

Frosting:

1. Cream the butter and the cream cheese at medium speed.
2. Gradually add the confectioners sugar.  Continue beating until the it is light and fluffy.

To Assemble the Cake:

1. Wait until the cake is fully cooled to room temperature. You need one to be flat (to form the bottom layer) so if domes formed on both cakes, use a long knife to cut the top of one layer to be flat (you can do both if you want the top flat, but drops are round).
2. Place about a ⅓ of the icing in a separate bowl, and working from this smaller amount (we’ll get back to the rest later – this is just to avoid getting crumbs in your icing) put a smooth later cross the top of the bottom layer.
3. Place the top layer on the bottom layer, and ice the top of the cake, and then the sides. This first coat should be fairly thin.  Give it a few minutes to dry on the surface before proceeding with the second coat.
4. Using the rest of the icing, apply a thick final coat of icing, particularly on top.
5. Using the blueberries attempt to create a Drupal logo pattern on the top of the cake.