Watts Cooking?

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

We celebrated my mom here on Sunday. Nothing big. My mom made us promise we wouldn't go overboard and get her anything big, so my sister and I just picked up some flowers and cards.  (I guarantee that when I'll be a mom, I'll use mother's day for all its worth and I'm expecting big presents!)

My mom got the night off from cooking on Sunday, which left my dad and I to take it on ourselves. My dad fired up the grill for a scrumptious display of sausages and grilled vegetables (peppers, asparagus, tomatoes, etc...). To spoil my mom, I decided to appeal to her sweet tooth. I wanted to make a desert, but not just anything. I wanted something that had more of a meaning.

Last Christmas, my family and I went to visit relatives in New-Brunswick, where my mom grew up. She is of Acadian heritage and grew up on a farm in the countryside.  While there during the holidays, we browsed through my grandmother's notebook of recipes. It was an old book, with browned pages and handwritten recipes jotted down. It was endearing to flip through the pages and hear my mom's stories of childhood memories, filled with sweet deserts and candies.

We're not really a desert family. Deserts are usually reserved for special occasions, but I felt that mother's day fit the bill. So I pulled a few pages out of a binder in the kitchen where I had transcribed my grandmother's recipes last Christmas and started thinking. That's when I found it: Lazy Daisy Squares. I remembered my mom's excitement when we found this recipe and she had told me to make sure to write that one down.

As I started mixing the ingredients, the sweet smells of the cake batter brought nostalgia. I daydreamed of my mom, as a child, watching my grandmother make the same cake. At that moment, I felt very connected to my family and my Acadian heritage.


The ingredients are simple, as is typical of farmhouse deserts. (Although I teased my mom about how native coconut was to New-Brunswick). The procedure was also straightforward and quick, which I'm sure came in handy when running a household with 5 kids like my grandmother.

The name is still a mystery, both my mother and grandmother claim to not know its origin. A quick google search brought up quite a few hits, but I refused to look at them. I prefer to look at this recipe like one of those family gems that will be passed down through the generations. And I'm now sharing it with you, so that you can bake with your kids and let them lick the bowl. I have many fond childhood memories of cooking with my mother, so it felt only fair that I now bake for her.

Happy (Belated) Mother's Day.