I loved baking when I was a kid. I especially loved themed cookbooks centered around my favorite princesses or characters, and I have fond memories of baking with my family. When I was in middle school I got really into cake decorating (I did it as a 4H project for several years), but at some point I fell out of the habit and recipes seemed daunting again. Even though I had grown up baking with my grandma, and had spent many hours watching and helping her, I was still intimidated to do it all myself. In high school I started uncovering a lot of my grandma’s recipes and began baking again. While I am by no means an expert, and mostly just bake because I love to have baked goods around, I have a few recipes that I always like to come back to because of their deliciousness, versatility, and nostalgia.Â
- Olive oil drop biscuits
I love biscuits. From eggs to chicken salad to soup, there are so many things I love to pair with biscuits! In my opinion, olive oil biscuits are much easier to work with than butter-based biscuits and take only a couple minutes to whip up and bake. I used eat them all the time at my grandparents’ house and fondly remember the taste!
- Banana Bread
We always seem to have old bananas around my house, and when bananas start to get a little brown and mushy they are perfect for banana bread! They are much easier to mash and mix into the batter (I like to use a potato masher, but if they are soft enough a fork will work just fine!). I love to have banana bread around as well because it doesn’t take much time to prepare if you’re in a rush to get to class because you just have to slice a chunk off the loaf!
- Oatmeal cookies
Personally I love raisins, and so I love oatmeal raisin cookies, but if you don’t that’s okay! Chocolate chips or just plain oatmeal will work just fine! With oatmeal cookies you don’t have to worry about rolling out dough like you do with sugar cookies. These were a cookie I made all the time with my grandma, and like the biscuits, you can use an ice-cream scoop to plop the cookie dough onto the baking pan and get even, round cookies. I used to make large batches of these cookies to bring with me to after-school theater rehearsals in high school, and I still associate the taste with my high school days.Â
- Italian knot cookiesÂ
My grandma made these all the time when I was a kid and they were by far my favorite cookie! While I love sweet things, I actually don’t like baked goods to be too sweet. The knot cookies struck the perfect balance for me of being just sweet enough, but not too much. They are also super fun to roll out and shape! Many recipes for these cookies have icing on them, but if you don’t want them to be too sweet then you can always leave them plain!
