The 6th Day of Christmas with Linda Hundt of Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe
Welcome to the 7th annual 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways!!!
12 Days.
12 friends guest posting sharing a Christmas idea, recipe or favorite with you.
12 great giveaways for you to enter along with one GRAND PRIZE for someone who comments to enter all 12 days!!
Please help me welcome Pie Baker Extraordinaire, Linda Hundt, founder of Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe in DeWitt, Michigan. Although her 3 bakeries are limited to Michigan at this time, her pies are widely acclaimed around the USA. She is the author of the cookbook Sweetie-licious Pies: Eat Pie, Love Life.
{Fun fact: Linda and & used to cheerlead for cross-town schools in high school so I recognized her the first time I went in her shop. Now, we’ve become friends as adults. She even let me use her remodeled farm house for a photo shoot recently for an upcoming, top secret project!}
Linda has been featured in numerous national, state, and local television segments, magazine, and newspapers including Country Living, Midwest Living, and Parade. Linda is a sought-after keynote speaker: speaking on faith, dreams, and love, as well as giving pie baking demonstrations for hundreds of people at a time.
She resides in a century-old farmhouse with her sweet husband. The Hundts have two beautiful daughters. Linda believes that Sweetie-licious Bakery Cafe can change the world one pie at a time through good food, good pies and good deeds and if you eat pie, you will inevitably, love life.
Now, from Linda…..
As long as I can remember I have loved to bake. It was part of my upbringing and I have so many wonderful memories associated with the sights, smells, and tastes of Christmas. Today I am sharing one of my favorite recipes with you. This is a wonderful cookie that my sweet mommy made all the time, as I know they were her favorite too! To make them a little fresher I have added some lemon zest to the original recipe. The secret to these and all cookies really, is to under bake them! I hope you enjoy making Mom’s Lemon Ginger Balls and making your own “sweet” memories this Christmas!
Mom McComb’s Lemon Ginger Balls
1 C. sugar
¾ C. Crisco shortening
1 egg
¼ C. Blackstrap molasses
2 C. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 ¼ tsp. cinnamon
1 ¼ tsp ginger
1 tsp. of lemon zest
Pinch of salt
Cream the sugar and shortening together. Add egg, molasses, and lemon zest in sugar and shortening mixture, mix well. Whisk flour, salt, soda, spices together. Add to other ingredients. Mix together well, but do not overbeat. Roll dough into small balls and roll in sugar, raw or granulated. Bake at 350 degree preheated oven for 8 11 minutes.
Connect with Linda at her website or Facebook.
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Giveaway: Linda is offering her beautiful cookbook Sweetie-licious Pies: Eat Pie, Love Life to the winner of today’s drawings.
To be entered for a chance to win, simply make a comment under today’s post sharing your “sweet” memories of pie or other favorite sweet holiday treats.
Don’t forget to come back for all 12 days! {And remember, if you comment on all 12 posts, you might win the Grand Prize!}
My favorite is french silk pie! Our traditions have pie at thanksgiving and cookies and candies at christmas. The kids love helping with the christmas treats — cutout cookies, decorating cookies, dipping pretzels in chocolate, rolling peanut butter balls… good memories.
My favorite pie is apple pie that my daughter makes. I’ve tried making coconut cream pie and was successful but these days, now that it’s just my husband and I, I really don’t have too many opportunities to bake pies but I sure love them!!
My Mama & me baking pecan pie !
This sounds really good. I have always made a similar gingersnap recipe but never thought of adding lemon — but ginger and lemon are so good together! I will have to try these.
As for baking memories … oh, I have so many great ones. At Christmas time my mother would bake for days, for gifts for family and friends. Russian teacakes, chocolate spritz, date-oatmeal cookies with candied cherries, big loaves of cinnamon swirl bread drizzled with icing and decorated with cherries and almonds, and her famous maple fudge. And much, much more! We kids loved helping. Such happy memories!
My favorite holiday pie was my aunts pecan pies!
Grandma had 5 pecan trees in her yard. The grandkids did the picking up.
One of Grandma’s past times was picking out the pecans.
She always wore an apron. She’d put a pile of pecans in her lap on her apron.
Then she’d shell until that pile was done.
Then she’d start on another pile.
My aunt made the best pies–chocolate, lemon, coconut, buttermilk etc.
But I liked the pecan one the best.
Her recipe didn’t have the exact amount of pecans to use, instead it had all the pecans Maw can pick out!!!
Any pie my grandmother makes is wonderful…especially her Michigan cherry pie…with cherries picked in Traverse City.
My apple pies have a special place in my heart because they were always my Grandpa’s favorites and he would request one for his birthday each year instead of cake. My Grandpa passed away this year but every time I bake an apple pie, I think of him!
I love peanut butter fudge.
monk5 at charter dot net
I love a good, warm egg custard pie. :)
My Granny’s homemade banana pudding.
I really loved my Grandmother’s coconut pie…made from scratch & topped with meringue…always looked for the sweet “beads” that came out on the top after she cooked it. I miss the pie, but miss my Grandma more.
My husband’said aunt Betty’s pecan pie was the best. I also loved my mom’said lemon marange. Both no longer with us. My oldest daughter makes the lemonade I make the pecan now
My mom makes butterscotch crunchies and these molasses candies that are a holiday favorite. When my grandma was alive she would make Russian roll.
My birthday is on Christmas day, so we always had some sort of birthday cake, until my mom found out that I liked cheesecake, then we had cheesecake for years!! Now it is fun to see what creation my husband and children come up with to celebrate my birthday – even though it is on another very special holiday!
i totally agree with your secret. Once I started doing that we loved them.
I have to admit, my greatest “memory of pie” is not remembered very highly! My grandma used to bring her “famous mincemeat pie” to EVERY family holiday. She was so faithful in bringing it and would bring it with such pride! It was something she absolutely loved and I think desperately wanted us to love as well! At the end of the meal we would see a just single slice of pie missing from the dish. Undoubtedly taken by grandma! On occasion we would scoop out a piece or two and let her know how delicious it was! It wasn’t until recently that she quit bringing that dish, but as this may be her last Christmas we all long for her to bring it just one last time!
My mom makes a delicious German Chocolate Pie at the holidays. She has every year since I was little. A few years ago, my husband asked her to make that pie for his birthday instead of getting a cake!
Has to be lemon meringue! Actually, I could just eat the lemon filling with the crust, the meringue was just extra!!
I don’t recall my mother cooking much. But, it’s not Christmas without a book of Life Savers on it!
When I was in college my go-to dessert was a fabulous lemon bundt cake with a lemon zest glaze oozing over it. I would take it to potlucks and picnics. Some of the students had a bake sale to raise money for an orphanage in Haiti and I entered my lemon cake. My chapel buddy talked his suite mates into going in together to buy my cake for $100.00. It was our top seller for a good cause!
Loved my Grandma’s berry cobbler! <3 But this sounds great
Pie making has always been one of my favorite memories. We had a large family and always needed a lot of pies. We would begin at least a week before the holiday with the making of pie crusts and simmering our own fillings. Then the day before we would assemble and bake. The house smelled amazing!
My favorite memory is making peanut brittle every year for my dad. It was his favorite.
My family loves pumpkin bars, but my favorite is pecan pie!
My mother-in-law is a pie baking queen – her specialty being lemon meringue. My specialty is my great grandmother’s sour cream rhubarb pie which my husband loves.