To begin with

Baking might be described as culinary science, but every home baker knows that recipes evolve over time, even new recipes that I have found on my own have morphed after very few repetitions. Whenever I ask my mom for one of her recipes, she will find her original recipe, type it out, email it to me and I end up with a finished product that doesn't resemble anything like the cake/loaf/pie that I remembered her making. Upon asking where I went wrong, she will confess to a multitude of slight changes, a bit more spice or less fat, a substitution for something that we didn’t normally buy or a specific ingredient that was only ever bought for that recipe, many of these are things I would not have thought up on my own. Like any living archive, the knowledge only exists if it gets shared, and I know that my sisters would like to benefit from this information too.

So the search is on, I have instructed my mom, gram and sisters to start making their lists of everything they want to see on here.  What do they remember baking and eating so I can start creating our archive of recipes, I have demanded access to original cook books and recipe cards, there will be interrogations on ingredients and techniques, and the stories that made them part of our history will be recorded alongside the recipe.  Thankfully, they have gamely agreed to help me, hopefully I won't make the process difficult.