A Cookie Baking Type Of Mom

1. Write about someone trying to recreate a grandparent’s signature baked good from memory.

Now, I’ve never been much of a baker. I’m great at reverse engineering fancy food I try at a fine restaurant, or throwing together this and that and creating haute cuisine. But baking requires following directions, something my Leo personality doesn’t like to do. My fire sign always thinks we know better! But as a child, there are pictures of me standing on a chair, helping my mom bake. The way my mother showed love was through cooking, and my grandmother showed it by self-sacrifice; doing without so she could make fancy High Tea or party dresses...those are the values I learned as a child. I’m American, but live in the UK, and cookies here are biscuits that one buys in a packet and has with tea...Americans created those tender morsels that melt in your mouth, meant to be served with milk after school. Now, that is as American as apple pie, which they do differently here with no spice. Baking has caught on here, and I had a hard time getting a mixer because they were selling out, but when I met my partner, I wanted to impress his daughters with cookies, like my mom made. My favourite to make was Snickerdoodles, and even saying the word here, people tease me about my Yank accent...what, that’s what they are called! By my teens, I had worn the page for that recipe out of my mothers Betty Crocker cookbook until it blended with the next few pages. They turned out thin and lovely, but my grandmother had some old world way of making them fluffy. They were fat and high and light as air. I had memorized the Betty Crocker recipe, but trying to make them like my grandma was my goal. I wanted to seem like the cool step mom type yet old-fashioned cookie baking mom...that was my real goal.

I met my partner on one of my stays in England. He was going through a divorce, so I respected that, and didn’t meet his daughters until much later; less they think of me the other woman. But I longed to do nice things for them. My Christmas gifts last year were marked from Santa. Buying their birthday gifts was incognito. Time passed, and my patience was wearing thin...I’m the kind of nice lady that actually wants to take on kids. Mine are grown, and I can only relish the time I had with them, which was not enough. I wish I had spent more time baking cookies rather than shuttling them to daycare so I could work all the time. The things we learn too late...I wanted to be that kind of mom now. These girls have a mother, don’t get me wrong, and I am in no way a replacement. But she is a takeaway, order Domino's kind of mum; I’m the kind that likes to greet kids with a healthy snack and ask about their day. That’s me. It seems ridiculous to punish the kind of person that cares, and yet I hear shrieking horrible ones over the phone, yelling at their partners about their kids trying to split them up...who does that? Yet I care, and I am hidden away, not to rock the boat, I said from the beginning I would not be treated like a concubine, that I am not that type. But the months went by and I had not met them.

My partner started to get busy at work, and finally the suggestion of meeting the girls to help out when they came for visitation after school came about. The first accidental visit, I am straight from the nail salon, looking vapid, and with a healthy snack prepared and dad cooking dinner...I probably didn’t come across too well. I thought of cookies for meetings in the future. Now one of my other favourites to make is peanut butter cookies, an American classic. But I was determined to make my grandmother’s Snickerdoodles for them. I made a bunch for people at work, to test the recipe. They thought the peanut butter weird, but like the Snickerdoodles. Peanut butter, for those that don’t know, is an unusual taste for the British. When my own daughter was young and growing up here, we couldn’t get it. Bagels and cream cheese were hard to find, making a pumpkin pie an ordeal, and trying to find ranch dressing a chore. Thanks to companies like Paul Newman and Starbucks, some of these have caught on. Pumpkin pie spice lattes have caught on, but not the pie. So, I brought them a fresh batch of Snickerdoodles. They loved them! 

The first few meetings of the girls were tense, with the older daughter determined not to like me. Oh, she got stroppy around me, didn’t want to be in the same room, all that. The first night I came early to make my version of spaghetti bolognese, one of their favourites. The younger daughter ate it with gusto, but I think I made the older girl’s stomach clench. She was loyal to her mum, and who was I to be there? I tried to explain that I was trying to help their dad, and if I could do chores like cooking and cleaning, that there was more time for him to spend with them after work. They understood, but my first few meetings were an epic fail.

The next one I did the guilty step parent thing; I got them a ton of gifts. I know it is a rotten parenting 101 tool, but I had to try. Handbags, art supplies, sweets, you name it. At least they knew it was from me, not some magical fairy that delivers things. Dad said it made it hard on the older daughter, and to stay away yet again. I was gutted, but determined. 

This threw me in quite a state; I loved this man, I gave up everything to be with him, but now his daughter didn’t like me and it was a huge back peddle! He wouldn’t see me, he wouldn’t sign my visa papers. I had literally given up everything in the States, right down to my beloved cat, and I was unceremoniously removed from the house to freeze and starve at my flat since my savings were long since passed dwindled, as I had spent all my savings on this courtship. Could it be that this kid not liking me could end the relationship of the love of my life? This gutted me! I had to think of something, fast. Not only did I want to be perceived as a ‘cool’ step mum type, but I was an old-fashioned cookie baking mom...now how many other women out there are going to sacrifice it all, take on someone else’s kids, look fab, work hard, and at the end of the day have cookies for the children when they get home from school? I wanted to give Maria Von Trapp a run for her money...But still, at this stage, I was poised to lose it all...

I figured that the cookie baking was something I could do and leave on the coffee table for them, knowing that the next day they would come over. I also made plates of healthy snacks, like I did for my own kids; fresh vegetables pulled right from the garden, cut up cute apples and cheese with a homemade dip. I found with my own kids, that if you put enough healthy stuff in front of them, in the right colours and shapes, they will eat it. In England, kids are taken straight from school to a sweet shop, so healthy goes out the door! That time I left the Snickerdoodles, and got a report that the older daughter thought they were “really good.”

The next time I did peanut butter, and that was an epic fail. I then made the recipe I had memorized of chocolate chip cookies, and added more sugar for the along with the sweeter candy bar I chunked up for chips. It appealed to the English palate. They loved those! I am still making these things and leaving them for the girls at this point; trying to insert myself without actually being there. It’s not an easy trick. But the cookies helped grease the wheels back into dad’s heart. 

Thanksgiving was soon approaching. They, of course, don’t have it here, but I have always really enjoyed making it for people abroad. Truthfully, my own memories of the holiday were harangue, meringue and pass the marmalade. The holiday in my house was so dysfunctional, and my mother, once a brilliant cook, was so awful in her later days, I left with a splitting headache. As a child, I vowed that I would have steak on Thanksgiving, and eventually make that party for the holiday! But I love making it for foreigners. I made all my special recipes, some I had memorized like traditional American apple and pumpkin pie [*note, we had to grow the pumpkin, cook it down, and blend it because you can’t buy it canned here], and the “killer mash” my kids loved, with skins on red potatoes and lots of garlic, cooked in chicken stock I reduced. Turkey breast, since their turkeys are still walking around, and fresh veg from the garden made the meal.

The younger daughter wanted to go and have Thanksgiving with us, being the more amiable of the two, but the older one did not. Much to my surprise, her mother told her to go. Who knew I would get an ally from the ex! The divorce had gone through; they take forever in the UK. I don’t know if it was because she realized I was a nice lady, or because her ex hardly saw the girls because of work, and with me that could change. Truthfully, the girls didn’t want to be there much, and I realized that weekend visitations had ended some time ago, with only a few hours on school days. The fact that I desperately wanted to be a part of that must have meant something to her. They came, and decided to wear “posh dresses”, instead of their school uniforms. I noticed a little make up on the older girl's face, and a bit of a heel to her boot. I later noticed she was even carrying the handbag I gave her! They looked lovely. For this, I had literally been baking for days, cooking all day, and was just dressed in a Thanksgiving colour sweater and pants. I made the table elegant, with dried Autumnal leaves and flowers, and hallowed out another pumpkin to put my new found floristry skills to use, and a candle on the new table I had distressed. It all looked very homey. I made homemade gravy and stuffing, and they loved that but not my killer mash. They loved the turkey, but the pies not so much. In keeping with the cookie thing, I had drizzled chocolate over shortbread, and brought English crackers as a party favour to keep it festive for them. They warmed up to me, played board games, told me dad’s faults [we agreed on that!] and bonded a bit that night. 

Currently, I’m baking gingerbread cookies. When I head to my partners, I figure I will leave those, but with a proposition that we go see Christmas lights in my village and get some Chinese food and have it at my flat. I think it is imperative that the momentum of me being a cool step mom-type person is kept going. And I owe it all to my grandmother's Snickerdoodles for finally breaking the ice! And not to be too corny, but besides extra baking soda and another egg, it turns out the secret ingredient for my grandmother’s Snickerdoodle was love...