Visions of sugary Christmas confections

Some of my favorite childhood memories swirl around sugar, mixing bowls and baking pans in our kitchen at Christmastime.

If you want to make some memories you will always keep, step into your kitchen with your family or a group of friends. There is something about the smell of freshly baked cakes, cookies and all kinds of candy that makes your mouth water and continues to linger in your mind for many years.

At my house, in addition to the normal candies and cookies that stack in perfect rows on platters and fill festive cake stands, a birthday cake was always present as well. Even though I was due at Thanksgiving, I waited until less than a week before Christmas to arrive.

My birthday is always caught up in all the hustle and bustle of Christmas. I never minded sharing my December birthday with Christmas because it was already a very wonderful time of year.

My mother did her best to separate my birthday and Christmas. She vowed never to use red and green to decorate my cake for fear it would somehow be confused with a regular Christmas cake. Instead, she opted for cowboys and Indians or circus themes.

As I grew up, it mattered less to me about the icing colors and what was on my cake and more about the quality and taste of the cake. In fact, on a few occasions as an adult, I opted to bake my own birthday cake and, despite Mother’s rigid rule of color choices, I adorned my cake with holly leaves, strands of Christmas lights and mounds of creamy red and green icing.

It wasn’t my birthday cakes that I remember so much as all the containers filled with sugary “goodies” that lined our kitchen counters and graciously ushered in the holidays. There they sat until friends came over and Mother carefully opened the various containers and neatly placed the cookies and candies on serving platters for guests.

In between those times, I would sneak into the kitchen like a thief and grab a piece or two in the dark of night. I would always carefully arrange what was left in such a way that it appeared like nothing had been taken.

Mother spent days baking before Christmas in order to have all of our favorite sweets prepared. She made chocolate fudge filled with pecans, fluffy white divinity, colorfully iced and decorated sugar cookies, clumps of chocolate-covered peanuts, mounds of crunchy peanut brittle and all sorts of cakes and pies.

God forbid Christmas Day would arrive before our kitchen was filled to the brim with sugar. It wouldn’t be Christmas without it!

With each recipe, Mother mixed in something even sweeter than sugar. She added her love.

She also allowed my sister and me to help chop nuts, roll cookies and carefully measure ingredients. As clouds of flour and the smell of toasting nuts filled the air, there was so much joy in that kitchen. We giggled as we baked, licking the spoons and sampling anything that ended up wop-sided or baked a little too long. Oh, how I loved baking with Mother!

Today, I still prepare some of the exact recipes Mother used all those years ago. Some things never change. Just the other day, I gathered with a small group of friends and we made candy — including chocolate-covered cherries — the entire day. Mother never made cherries. In fact, I didn’t even know a person could make a chocolate-covered cherry from scratch. The only ones we had were the boxes of Queen Anne cherries still sold in stores.

Just like my birthday will always roll around right before Christmas, our kitchen will always be filled with sweet confections, and the taste of a piece of fudge or divinity will always make me smile.

Mother may not be with me anymore to celebrate my birthday and all the sweetness of the holidays, but one thing is for sure. In my mind, I can still see her standing at the stove stirring up some Christmas goodies adding her own special touch of love.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 11:46 AM with the headline "Visions of sugary Christmas confections."