When Ashley Schoenith left her hometown of Tallahassee, Florida, for the University of Georgia, her grandmother presented her with a notebook filled with recipes — some handwritten or typed on notecards, others clipped from magazines, newspapers and the backs of boxes.
Now a mother of three living in Atlanta, Schoenith still draws inspiration from that gift — both for home-cooked meals and for Heirloomed, the lifestyle brand she created around her passion for preserving things from the past.
Her first book, “The Heirloomed Kitchen: Made-From-Scratch Recipes to Gather Around for Generations” (Gibbs Smith, $35), pays tribute to the matriarchs who continue to inspire her through the recipes they left behind.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
In this interview, edited for clarity, Schoenith explains why we should be passionate about preserving family traditions.
Q: How did you come to be the keeper of your family’s recipes?
A: I grew up in the kitchen with my mom and my grandmother, cooking and baking and hosting and entertaining. Everything we ate was homemade. It’s how I was raised and how my husband and I are raising our family today. When my grandmother passed away, and we all went in and were cleaning out her house to capture the special pieces that resonated with each of us, it was just natural that her huge stack of family recipe cards would be handed down to me. I cherish them all.
Q: What is it that most fascinates you about these recipes?
A: There’s just something special about connecting with those people from the past, seeing their handwriting and being able to recall those memories of a special dish they made, or a time you had that (dish) or learned to make it with them.
My great-grandmother’s recipes are in this beautiful cursive writing. ... Some of my grandmother’s are typeset on her manual typewriter. They’re stained and splattered. It’s just cool to see the vanilla stain on it. You can tell the ones that have been used.
My grandmother used to write a lot of notes on hers. One of the recipes I included in the book is for a peanut butter and chocolate treat called buckeyes. I’ve always loved them and thought she did, too. But I saw she had made a little note at the bottom that said, “not especially good — too sweet.” I appreciate knowing that, even though she really didn’t like them, she made them for us every single holiday.
Q: The AJC first learned about you and your grandmother, Cele Marcoux, in 2009, when you contributed her recipe for frozen lime mint salad. You described her as a “jack of all trades” and a “masterful seamstress,” and told us about IceMilk Aprons, the business venture the two of you cooked up when you were barely out of college.
A: My grandmother and I started IceMilk Aprons because we both loved to cook and sew. The name was inspired by the waffles and ice milk she would serve us whenever we came to visit. She was very entrepreneurial. We decided to design aprons as a way for us to spend time together and use our talents. One of our patterns, frosty tin marshmallows, was named for that frozen salad I sent to the AJC.
We packaged them in canning jars with a couple of blank recipe cards and a little swatch of fabric that you could stitch your initials on. You could have your mom or grandmother stitch theirs and tack it on the inside of the apron and pass all of it down with your handwritten family recipes.
She passed away as I was just handing it over to our manufacturing partners to be our first batch.
Credit: AJC archives
Credit: AJC archives
Credit: Heidi Harris
Credit: Heidi Harris
I later rebranded the business Heirloomed, to leave a lot of room for wiggling between our vintage and textile lines. We now do table linens, tea towels, hand-poured candles, keepsake gifts, and home and decor items. I always knew I wanted to do a book. Everything we sell is meant to be used and loved — a little nostalgic, and really made for that old soul. It all comes back to the heirloom.
Q: When you take one of these old recipes into your modern kitchen, do you try to follow them to the letter?
A: Yes and no. There are some pretty weird ones, with ingredients that we don’t use today, like oleo, or things like that frozen lime mint Jell-O mold that ran in the AJC that have gotten out of fashion. The timeless classic recipes are good places to start, but often vague. A pinch of this, a dash of that.
I think that’s where it takes getting in the kitchen with (family members) and watching, while you still have the opportunity. There’s nothing like seeing the consistency of the dough, or some sort of technique to really be able to master a recipe and have it taste the way you recall.
It’s a little bit of a lost art, being able to look in your recipe box — and then see what ingredients you have to work with — to whip something up. It’s not about perfection. For me, it’s more about trying. Maybe you’re too busy to make a pot roast every Sunday, but when you do have the time to do it, you’ve got the know-how. And if you’re dealing with allergies or gluten intolerance, you can adapt, the way our mothers and grandmothers did. That’s the cool thing. You really can re-create things with substitutes.
This is why, to me, it’s so important to preserve the art of cooking and baking from scratch and carry on those techniques to the next generation. Because, once they’re forgotten, they’re gone.
Q: How about your own children? Do they like being in the kitchen with you?
A: They do, yeah. ... They love coming home when there’s a baked cake on the cake stand. My son recently requested lasagna for dinner. But they all like the sweets best, of course. The strawberry shortcake is a favorite, as are the toffee bars, the meringues.
Q: Since this is Mother’s Day, is there a recipe that most reminds you of your mother?
A: Yes! It’s the pie crust cinnamon rolls. Whenever I go home to Florida, and whenever my mom comes up to see us, I always ask her to make me a batch, because I just love them so much. There’s not much to them. A lot of times, she would make them with leftover pie dough around the holidays. That’s how the recipe got started. For breakfast, she would make them with biscuit dough scraps. For the recipe in my book, I used my grandmother’s pie crust recipe. It’s a great example of how resourceful they were.
PIE CRUST CINNAMON ROLLS
For the pie crust:
1½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring
dash of salt
¾ cup shortening
5 tablespoons cold water
For the cinnamon filling:
3 tablespoons butter, melted
⅓ cup packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a baking sheet.
Make the pie crust: In a mixing bowl, combine the flour and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in the shortening until coarse crumbs form. Stir in the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until you are able to form the dough into a ball.
On a floured sheet of waxed paper or a countertop, roll out the dough to about ¼-inch thick.
Make the filling: Brush the melted butter over the entire pie crust. Sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon evenly across the top. Roll into a log.
Cut off the ends and discard. Cut the log into slices about ½-inch thick. Place the rounds on the prepared baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the rolls turn slightly brown and the cinnamon mixture gets bubbly.
Makes 12 cinnamon rolls.
Per cinnamon roll: 212 calories (percent of calories from fat, 67), 2 grams protein, 16 grams carbohydrates, 4 grams total sugars, 1 gram fiber, 16 grams total fat (5 grams saturated), 8 milligrams cholesterol, 49 milligrams sodium.
Reprinted with permission from “The Heirloomed Kitchen: Made-From-Scratch Recipes to Gather Around for Generations” by Ashley Schoenith (Gibbs Smith, 2024).
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