My Mother’s Shortbread Cookies: A Legacy of Love

My Mother’s Shortbread Cookies: A Legacy of Love

My mother came from a little fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada—one of many children in a family where her father cooked on fishing boats and her mother stretched every resource to feed them all. She had to leave school in eighth grade to help support the family, never getting the chance to graduate high school or go to college.

But what she lacked in formal education, she made up for in passion. My mother had an insatiable love for cooking and crafts that blessed everyone who knew her. She became one of the primary providers of church dinners wherever we attended, her hands constantly creating—baking, sewing, crafting. These things gave her purpose. They gave her life.

Christmas Baking: Our Tradition

Christmas was—and still is—my favorite time of year. The amount of baking that would happen in our household was extraordinary. As a child, I went from stealing cookie dough when she wasn’t looking to eventually becoming her helper, rolling out dough and cutting shapes alongside her.

I still have her cookie cutters. The tree, the bell, and a few other shapes safely tucked away. Somehow, illogical though it is, those cookies aren’t quite the same without them. Funny how these things work.

The Joy of Giving

She enjoyed teaching me, but the most important part wasn’t the baking itself—it was what we gave away. Baskets and baskets of cookies, chocolate, and candy went to people in our life. Our church benefited from her kitchen. Friends blessed us in return with their own homemade treats. When I was in music school, my professors looked forward to her arrival at events, knowing she’d bring something delicious.

Musicians love to eat.

My mother was a servant—not the obligated kind, but the kind who chooses to serve because giving brought her joy.

Carrying On Her Legacy

In today’s fast-paced world, I do my best to remember her example as time moves faster and the days behind me outnumber those ahead. You see, I lost my mom twelve years ago to metastatic lung cancer—just eleven weeks after I opened the restaurant that would have been her pride and joy.

A little girl from Nova Scotia who dreamed of being a figure skater, who had to abandon school and all her hopes in eighth grade, found her purpose in cooking. And her daughter was going to have a restaurant.

But God had other plans.

She got to see the restaurant in working order once—just after we opened, when she had just enough strength to visit between treatments. It was the first and last time she saw it before she died.

Always Make the Cookies

Today, I honor her every day by carrying on what she would have loved to do. For years after she passed, I couldn’t bring myself to make these Christmas cookies. The grief was too raw. Finally, I did.

And now I make them every year.

This recipe is the purest memory I have of my mother, alongside the baby blanket and pillow she made me that I still keep close. I hope you’ll make these cookies and think about the people in your life who deserve to be remembered—the ones who gave selflessly, who found joy in serving, who made the world sweeter simply by being in it.

Always make the cookies. Always honor those who have gone before.

Legacy is delicious.

[Get the full recipe for Mom’s Famous Christmas Shortbread Cookies here →]

Mom and me around 2005 at a family wedding in Rockland, Maine.