I'm Maria. My mom is Mary Lyn. We've been making cookies together for as long as I can remember - although it wasn't until I had children of my own that she finally allowed me to graduate from just washing the cookie sheets to actually mixing the dough and baking the cookies.

The most special cookies of all were the ones we made for Christmas. Every December, a full week would be set aside for holiday baking. Endless hours of preparation would result in an overwhelming assortment of cookies in the best Italian tradition. Each one full of the same love, devotion, and caring that Mom put into everything she did. Thinking back, it seems every time my mother and I made another batch, I learned a new baking secret, and she had so many to share.

Around 1999, our family was devastated by the news that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. All at once, so many things became meaningless, but what became even more meaningful were the moments spent with Mom.

We never got to make cookies that year, but we realized that life is too short to wait till Christmas to share this wonderful tradition together so we decided that once Mom was cancer-free, we would make Christmas cookies every day. We are grateful that our family was given a second chance and so we decided to spend it together baking for other families.

I recently lost my mom, but her story (and ours) will live on forever in Maria’s Mom’s Bakery.