If you’re looking for a sure-fire, easy to fix dessert for your holiday parties, this Cranberry Pie recipe is foolproof.

I love anything with cranberries in it. That sweet-tart flavor of cranberries is pure bliss in cakes, crisps, cookies, even granola. I always buy a few extra bags of fresh cranberries during the holiday season and freeze them for later in the year. They’ll keep their flavor for a year. Of course, I make my own cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. (more…)

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For her last birthday, my six-year-old granddaughter, Juliet, received the Green Princess Cookbook. As we looked through each page together, she kept repeating, “Ooh, let’s make this one.” I love to cook with my family. I’ve cooked with my grandma and mom. Now I’m cooking with my daughter and two granddaughters.

I enjoy looking at recipes and have been collecting them for four decades. The color photographs in Green Princess Cookbook look yummy. There’s a photograph for each of the thirty recipes. They’re divided into categories of drinks and ice cream, dips and chips, bigger bites, breads and spreads, and sweets and treats.

These recipes are healthy and fun. Subtitled Sweets and Treats to Save the Planet, the book is part of Barbara Beery’s series of cookbooks for girls that “encourage them to participate and celebrate the joys of cooking.”  I like recipes that are easy, and these are definitely easy, as well as kid-friendly.

Author Barbara Beery has a degree in elementary education, three children, and founded Batter Up Kids Cooking School eighteen years ago. Her mission is to bring children, families, and communities together to make a positive health-conscious difference in our next generation of cooks.

Beery believes that children are the key ingredient in changing the way Americans eat. I completely agree and we moms and grandmas have a great opportunity to teach them. In the short introduction, called “It’s Easy Being Green,” Beery explains what’s organic and why buying local is good for the environment. She also explains farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and community gardens. She suggests that you make all the recipes in her book with organic and local ingredients whenever possible.

Juliet understands organic and local.  She and her parents and sister have a bountiful vegetable garden. They’ve harvested pounds of sweet cherry tomatoes, several dozen of the sweetest cantaloupes I’ve ever tasted, and gigantic cucumbers.

We decided to make the Cinnamon-Maple Crisps recipe. It required only three ingredients and could be made in ten minutes. We had so much fun. We didn’t make our crisps heart-shaped like the photo, but they still tasted delicious. Juliet did all the steps by herself. After we cooked them, we did a taste comparison. She preferred the honey flavor over maple syrup.

We can’t wait to cook together again. Juliet wants to make “Baby Butterfly Cupcakes” and I want to make “Cornbread in a Recycled Can.”

Cinnamon-Maple Crisps Recipe

24 (3 1/2 — inch wonton wrappers

2 teaspoons maple syrup or honey

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper or a clean brown paper grocery bag cut to fit pans. Set aside. In a small bowl, combine maple syrup or honey and cinnamon.

Carefully remove wonton wrappers from package, one at a time, and place on a cutting board. Using assorted 2-inch cookie cutters, cut wonton wrappers into various shapes. Place cutouts ½ inch apart on prepared sheet pans. Lightly brush each wrapper with cinnamon-honey mixture.

Place sheet pans in oven and bake for 4 to 6 minutes. Watch the crackers carefully as they brown fast! Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes before removing crackers from pan and serving.

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Oné of the best ways to pass on your family heritage to your grandchildren is to cook with them. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandma when I was growing up, but surprisingly, we never cooked together. She was a great cook and did pass down all her recipes to me, handwritten on  3 x 5 index cards.

I’ve made a point of being “the grandma we cook with” when I get together with my granddaughters. My six-year old granddaughter, Juliet, came to visit a few days before Passover. We made charoset together. There are more varieties of charoset recipes than any other Jewish recipe. Charoset is my favorite symbolic Passover food on the Seder plate. A mixture of apples, nuts, wine, cinnamon, and honey, charoset symbolizes the mortar that the Hebrew slaves used to make bricks in ancient Egypt.

I showed Juliet the recipe card in my grandma Amelia’s careful handwriting—a bit yellowed and stained from all the years I’ve used it—but still legible. It brought back memories of the delicious, sweet, jam-like mixture my grandma Amelia prepared for our large family seders. We could hardly wait to get to the part of the Passover story when we spread a large dollop of charoset on matzo and savored the sweet crunchiness of the two symbolic foods.

I thought it would be fun to make charoset because it’s such a tactile way to pass on both family and Jewish traditions. I got out my grandma’s vintage meat grinder and rigged it onto the kitchen counter. Juliet started turning the crank before we’d even gotten out the ingredients. As we poured handfuls of raisins, almonds, and apple slices into the bowl of the grinder, the crank became harder to turn. We could have made the whole thing in the Cuisinart, but doing it the way my grandma did made me feel like she was right there in the kitchen watching us work together. Of course, we had to snitch a bite every few minutes to make sure it tasted good. I could just hear my grandma saying: “You’re a nibbler from Nibblerville!”

This year at our family seder Juliet had a proud look on her face as she served her great-great grandma’s charoset. I thought it tasted just like my grandma’s.

Do you have a family recipe to pass on to your grandchildren that would share your family heritage?

My Grandma’s Recipe for Charoset
2 lbs seedless raisins
¼ lb shelled almonds
handful of hazel nuts
4 large tart apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbs wine, grape juice, or lemon juice
Grind the mixture together using small grinder holes.
Serves 20 people

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