Baking therapy connects past to present

When the world weighs on me, I pull out a tattered cookbook and thumb through the pages. Baking therapy. The old book has recipes from decades and people long past. There’s something soothing about those pages, and revisiting family stories.

I don’t know that it’s a family history so much as a hodgepodge of memories. Past celebrations. Past holidays. Past conversations.

I replay conversations with my dad over and over again. When things are especially trying, I picture him in my mind and listen to his words of wisdom, or snarkiness. He was good at both. Maybe that’s why he liked snickerdoodles so much. Buttery goodness with a warm yet sharp bite of cinnamon. That recipe is on the top of the cookie section. I feel especially connected to him when I’m baking. His motto: Two hands, two cookies (or cakes, pies, etc).

The red and white cookbook holds recipes from my mother, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and a host of family friends, many of whom I never met. The yellowed pages let me connect with generations of women who’ve gone before me. Unlike the conversations I still have with my dad, these recipes let me connect with generations of women through a universal love language.

I pull out a recipe for carrot cake – Hawaiian Delight. As the story goes, this belonged to a great-grandmother. Whether it’s true or not, I always smile when the cinnamon wafts through the air as I’m mixing the ingredients. A celestial hug.

Each recipe has a story. When I need to escape for a while, I’ll read through the book and just let my mind wander. Oatmeal cake. My Grandmother Dobson’s Daffodil Cake. My mother’s pie crust recipe. I always smile when I get to the pie section of the book. As Dobson lore goes, my mother decided to bake a pie. She did everything as her mother taught her and spent some time perfectly crimping the crust. Into the oven the pie went. When the timer went off, my mother reached in and grabbed the pie plate. Without oven mitts. The pie plate flew and shattered when it hit the ground. The pie crust did not.

I also have a plastic box with the remnants of an even older cookbook. The pages are delicate, and I’m always cautious when I’m thumbing through these memories. As I’m measuring and putting things together, I think about the women who gifted these recipes down through time and am grateful they landed in my kitchen. It’s a gift to let the present go for a bit, to spend time with the generations of women who’ve gone before me. When I bake from their pages, they are right there with me, a bridge connecting the past to the present.

Patti Dobson writes about faith for The Eastern New Mexico News and Quay County Sun. Contact her at:

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