A Sweet Taste of Christmas Past

Every family has that one recipe that signals the season. For some it's gingerbread, for others, peppermint bark. But in my childhood home, nothing said Christmas to me quite like oatmeal candy.

- Lynn Langford

OLD FASHIONED GOODNESS

It wasn't a glossy cookbook dessert or something you'd find in a bakery window. Instead, it was simple, old-fashioned, and just a little imperfect. The kind of recipe where you watched the pot bubble and hoped it would "set up" just right. Some years it was fudgy, other years a little crumbly—but every year, it was equally delicious.

I can still picture my mother at the stove, wooden spoon in hand, the smell of cocoa and sugar filling the air. My siblings and I would eagerly wait for the moment she dropped spoonfuls of the warm mixture onto wax paper. It was agony to wait for them to cool—but that first bite was always worth it.