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Sweet Ticket Giveaway, Week 2: What's Your Favorite Childhood Dessert Memory?
I have one single memory from childhood that trumps all others I have. My parents, sisters and I drove into Queens to pick up my grandparents for a long weekend back at our house on Long Island.
On the way back to LI, we randomly took a detour to see my great aunt who we hadn't seen in many years. She worked in an old Italian pastry shop. When we walked into the old shop (which smelled like heaven to an 11 year old Italian-American kid) she lite up when she recognized us - then the procession of hugging and kissing began.
We all admired the displays of cookies,pastries, and cakes. We got a big box of pastries that was tied with the red and white string that hung from the tin cylinder in the ceiling. As we walked out, Aunt Rae grabbed me by the arm and said, "come here". She brought me in the bake of the bakery and before me were racks and racks of freshly made cannoli shells. She grabbed another box and started filling the cannoli creme into the freshly made shells. When she was done filling the box with what appeared to be over a dozen freshly made cannoli's she topped it off with a generous dose of confectionary sugar and walked me out to the car.
They tasted like the most unbelievable cannoli I have ever had. They would have tasted better if I was allowed to eat it in the car however!
Sweet Ticket Giveaway, Week 2: What's Your Favorite Childhood Dessert Memory?
We have our randomnly drawn winners. They are BrooklynBrownie and jgiovengo. Congrats to them, and thanks to everyone who commented. We will contact winners by email for instructions on how to pick up tickets.
Sweet Ticket Giveaway, Week 2: What's Your Favorite Childhood Dessert Memory?
When I was a child, my mother and grandmother used to make Polish "babka". We loved it. There was a family story that when my Uncle Leo was a child, he used to like to steal the raisins out of the babka and replace them with crumpled up newspaper when no one was looking. (AND BOY WOULD HE GET IN TROUBLE!!!) (LOLOLOL) As this was many, many years ago and my mother, grandmother and Uncle Leo have all passed on, every time I smell a babka baking in a bakery or pastry shop, it always brings a smile to my face.
Sweet Ticket Giveaway, Week 2: What's Your Favorite Childhood Dessert Memory?
My favorite dessert memory didn't occur until I was 22 years old and opening a hotel. Because of my job in the banquet department, I was working 100 hours a week to open a brand new hotel outside of Washington DC. My staff didn't speak English, I was living in rooms that were not completed, undergoing physical therapy on a work-related back injury three times a week, and my fiance was deployed to the Persian Gulf. Needless to say, life could have been better.
One of these awful winter nights were it was thirty degrees outside and eighty inside we had over 1,000 high school kids in for an Inaugural Ball. They ate and drank us out of house and home and worked us until two am! Exhaused, hot, sweaty and sore and made my way into the kitchen for some quiet and a glass of water. The restaurant manager, chef and I all ended up with the remainder of a five gallon bucket of chocolate ice cream and spoons. It wasn't even the best ice cream I've ever had, but it was at that moment. Cold, rich and satisfying it soothed the long event behind us and fortified me for the rest of the night ahead...getting ready for breakfast.
To this day, when it gets really rough, I reach for some chocolate ice cream and a cold, stainless steel table to ease the stress of the day and give me the strength to keep going.
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I have one single memory from childhood that trumps all others I have. My parents, sisters and I drove into Queens to pick up my grandparents for a long weekend back at our house on Long Island.
On the way back to LI, we randomly took a detour to see my great aunt who we hadn't seen in many years. She worked in an old Italian pastry shop. When we walked into the old shop (which smelled like heaven to an 11 year old Italian-American kid) she lite up when she recognized us - then the procession of hugging and kissing began.
We all admired the displays of cookies,pastries, and cakes. We got a big box of pastries that was tied with the red and white string that hung from the tin cylinder in the ceiling. As we walked out, Aunt Rae grabbed me by the arm and said, "come here". She brought me in the bake of the bakery and before me were racks and racks of freshly made cannoli shells. She grabbed another box and started filling the cannoli creme into the freshly made shells. When she was done filling the box with what appeared to be over a dozen freshly made cannoli's she topped it off with a generous dose of confectionary sugar and walked me out to the car.
They tasted like the most unbelievable cannoli I have ever had. They would have tasted better if I was allowed to eat it in the car however!