“But Mommy, we only have plain cookies. We have to go to the store for FROSTED cookies! Please, pretty please? They can’t be plain!” And she replied, “Why don’t you just make it yourself.”
“You can MAKE frosting?” That’s what I said to her. I was incredulous. I was five years old and determined that those plain daisy shaped butter cookies in our pantry and served in every kindergarten in town needed a little pizzaz.
Five minutes later I had dragged a chair to the kitchen counter, climbed up, and was happily stirring sugar, butter, and red-food coloring together. I remember smooshing those flower cookies together with LOTS of pink frosting. Best sandwich cookies ever!
Now in all honesty I was most certainly whining, and my mother was inventing an activity just to keep me quiet, but that moment has turned into a lifetime of baking, candy making, and entertaining. At The Sugar Baker Queen we believe anything worth doing, is worth over doing.
My mother will tell you about a beehive cake which I insisted be made with oreos, coolwhip, but no honey and apparently just got taller and taller until I was satisfied. I remember a cake with pudding between the layers that was ultimately served in soup bowls.
On a trip to Germany when I was eight, I was left alone for just a few minutes to play by a tiny cottage-like shed on my uncle’s allotment in the community garden in Fürth. In the five minutes it took my parents to walk through the garden, I had picked Johannisbeeren--little red currants, stolen sugar out of the tea caddy in the cottage, mashed them up together, and pronounced it jelly--no cooking necessary! It was fantastic on Lebkuchen cookies.
My first solo project with an oven was created with the happy misunderstanding that a cup of butter was three sticks melted in a liquid measure rather than one stick dry measured (Try this, it takes forever to bake, but it’s amazing!).
Then at sixteen I adapted a family recipe and began making fudge at the holidays for presents. Hundreds of pounds of fudge and many, many years later we have the perfect Royal Fudge recipe and new flavors! After that came the cookies, Tennessee Pralines, and cakes too!
Sugar Baker Queen started out as a professional nickname, and has evolved into a sugar-based venture with a wonderful entrepreneurial spirit and lots of support from customers, friends, and family. I am working on a new cookbook, and I spend hours testing family recipes from my Southern and German grandmothers who taught me how to make biscuits, pound cake, and other unspeakably yummy things. We are always creating new concoctions and love any suggestions or recipes you want to share.
Julia Child said, “People who love to eat are always the best people.”
Bon Appetit!
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