Travel Tuesday. Four Generations of bakers . . .

For someone who loves to travel as much as I do, I have a rather odd quirk.

When I'm home and in my regular routine, I won't go any where that takes longer than 10 minutes to get to. 15 minutes if it's something super special. Like church. It takes 25 minutes to get to church when we detour to pick up our daughter Crystal.

This means my adventures at home tend to be in a rather limited area.

Every once in a while though, an opportunity comes up that I just can't miss, even though it requires a longer drive time.

That's what happened at the end of September.

My cousin Leona called to ask if I wanted to join her, her daughter Melissa and Melissa's sweet little girl for a day of baking.

Now what you need to know about Leona and I is that our grandfather was a baker, my dad was a baker and  her mom worked in the bakery  becoming a caterer later on. Leona's daughter Melissa is also a baker. You can check out her website here. Leona and I like to bake for fun. We also love to bake things to give away.

 I love to gift people with homemade baking.

As a matter of fact, I pay my hairstylist in part with  home made bread. Yesterday she  went home with a loaf of bread and 4 gigantic chocolate chip cookies.

So, as you may have guessed, we take our baked goods seriously!

Which is why, when she offered me that chance to spend quality, family time baking, I was all for it!

Even if I did have to drive 50 minutes to get there. . . 

Leona managed to get a few recipes of old family favorites from her mom. Mocha tarts, Opa's brownies with a chocolate ganache frosting and my sister Lisa's favorite marzipan (almond) Dollar Bars.

Oh my . . .

Melissa made up a huge batch of butter cream icing and the sponge cake for the dollar bars before she got to her mom's (she had a much longer drive than I did!) Leona made the almond filling for the mocha tarts and baked up a few batches of brownies.

We were going to assemble the tarts,  dollar bars and then frost the brownies. All this yummy goodness was being made for the ladies attending the upcoming Ladies' Night Out. (although we each brought home enough goodies for the freezer to last a while.)

Unless your daughter discovers she loves mocha tarts. Then they disappear in short order. Before you get any.

Holly . . .

Good thing Holly wants to join the tradition. We need more tarts for Christmas.

Not only did I have a blast baking that day, Melissa also brought her cutie patootie daughter along so I got to sneak in a few toddler snuggles as well.

I do miss hanging out with little ones.

Thanks for a inviting me to share in the fun!