“Welcoming the adoptee with fresh cookies”

“Tutti amano i biscotti!”

Everyone loves cookies. Cookie recipes are often handed down from one generation to the next. Favorite recipes are associated with holidays and religious celebrations, cultural events, ethnic traditions and traditional family gatherings. What grandchildren often remember most about their grandmothers are the smells of her kitchen and the pleasant taste of her favorite cookie recipes.

A visit to Downtown Dough in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, is guaranteed to stimulate your appetite and imagination. They have thousands of cookie cutters, presses, decorations, stencils, cookie jars, icing tools, cupcake cups, baking pans and molds for every occasion. Their pre-made cookie doughs with names like Carmel Apple Gourmet, Chocolate Chip, Fudge, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Coconut, and Chocolate Peanut Butter are guaranteed to please.

Baking cookies is a fun multigenerational experience that everyone can enjoy. It is a shared activity that promotes conversation, friendship and bonding. The heart of a home is in the kitchen and one of the best ways to provide a genuinely warm welcome to children who are ‘orphaned, fostered and adopted’ into a new home is to stimulate their olfactory senses and tastebuds with fresh cookies. When the baking process starts wonderful smells permeate the atmosphere. Everyone with a stake in the outcome worriedly gazes through the oven door to make sure they are perfectly baked. Timing is important and when the timer bell rings everyone jumps to their feet like a jack-in-a-box to retrieve their buttery sweet master pieces. The salivating sweet smell of fresh cookies puts a twinkle in the eye. When the results are shared, and deemed perfect by everyone after the first bite, smiles prevail, and the satisfied sound of awes, followed by welcoming invitations to “have another one” fills the air with joy.

I import Adriana’s Italian Almond Cookies from Agrigento, Sicily, Italy, as a special treat for weddings, rehearsals and formal family celebrations. My father made the ceramic horse and the colorful Sicilian cart has been present at nearly every family celebration, wedding, and special event in my birth family for several generations.