Cherry Squares

It finally feels like spring in NYC! This has been the longest bout of cold and rainy weather I've witnessed since moving to NY. And because there has been such bad weather the crop of normally lucious springs flowers were few and short lived (unlike last spring.)

I had to get my flower fix with the flowers my roomies or I bought, like these:

Aren't they divine? And isn't that vase gorgeous? I bought that vase while in Tuscany with my mom in 2008 and my mom is the subject I want to mention today.

Lots of people posted about their mommies when mother's day rolled around. However, my mom's birthday was last week and I figured I'd wait until this post to talk about her especially since I used a recipe from her cook book.

When I was still in high school, my mom created a compilation of all of us kids favorite recipes to surprise us with at Christmas. I'm the youngest in my family and while my older siblings were excited about this gift, I just shrugged it off as nice but not something I'd use.

Wow. What a couple of years, lots of knowledge, and tons of experiences does to a person. I treasure this book so much now! There are about 100 recipes of our faves that my mom took time to type out. Now that I'm older (and wiser) I am simply amazed that she etched out time for this project in her busy life which consisted of a full time job, cooking for the fam, practicing organ and piano, being active in our church, and being at every basketball game, soccer game, play, choral concert, and band concert my siblings and I were in.

PLUS (get ready to be ever more amazed), at the bottom of each recipe she put in a quote. Some are quotes from famous people, some she said, and some are from my brothers, my sister, and me when we were young (which, by the way, she has a whole other collection in a book of funny or sweet things we said as kids.)

At the bottom of the cherry squares recipe is a quote from my oldest brother and the date he said it (5.15.83). "Where's my calendar? I've been looking for it for years!"

I'll wait for you to finish "awwwwwww"-ing over the cookbook. And yes. You have my permission to copy my mother's idea. In fact, she's a really good mom and a really good person, so I SUGGEST you copy her. :)

Cherry Squares (from my Mom's Best Recipes cookbook)

Ingredients for squares:

½ C butter

½ C Crisco
(or use 1 C margarine instead of the above)
1 ½ C sugar
4 eggs
1 C flour
1 T lemon juice
1 can cherry pie filling
Ingredients for frosting:
Milk
Powdered sugar

Directions:
Beat shortenings and sugar together until it resembles whipped cream. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well. On low speed, mix in flour and then lemon juice. Put in a greased and floured 10-inch x 15-inch jelly roll pan. (I used a 9x12.5 pan.) Mark dough into 24 squares (6x4). Put 1 T pie filling in center of each square. Bake 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Frost by dribbling lines of thin powdered sugar frosting over squares. Cut into squares when cool.
To make the frosting:
Mix ½ cup of powdered sugar with a teaspoon of milk. Keep adding milk/powdered sugar until you get the consistency you prefer. (I prefer mine to be pretty thick and sticky. Not runny.)

PS I realized the other day that I haven't posted much about the messes I've been making. It's mainly because I haven't made much of a mess in my new place. Until this recipe. You can't quite see it, but the flour got sprayed all the way past the blue jars. Whoops...

Bake well and prosper!