Baking cookies to honor Mom

After his mother died in 1997, Joseph Kane of Cary decided he should take up her Christmas cookie mantle.

This was no simple undertaking.

His mother, Ruth, baked so many holiday cookies that she had been featured in the Buffalo Evening News. So it should come as no surprise that Joseph Kane received three nominations when we asked readers to nominate friends, relatives and co-workers whose holiday treats they pine for all year long.

By mid-November, he had baked more than 600 cookies and was far from done. "This year, it's going to be more than 2,000," says Kane, 75, rolling out gingerbread dough on a recent Saturday morning.

Despite his retirement, Kane works four days a week for Penske Corp., the trucking company.

Starting the first week in November, he bakes cookies on his days off: date nut pinwheels, fudgy bonbons, chocolate chips, Mexican wedding cakes, thumbprints, buckeye peanut butter balls, peanut butter bars and peanut butter kisses, and, of course, gingerbread and cutout sugar cookies.

Being from Buffalo, he even has a bison-shaped cookie cutter.

For Kane, this is a way to relax after work, get into the holiday spirit and remember his mother. Though he was too interested in sports while growing up to bake with her, once he moved away from Buffalo, it wasn't Christmas without his mother's cookies, and so he started baking her gingerbread and cutout sugar cookies.

He added new cookies each year. "It seemed like a challenge to me," he says.

The cookies are kept in a full-size freezer in the Kanes' garage.

Those receiving a Kane cookie tray include their three daughters, neighbors, his and his wife's co-workers and the priests at St. Francis of Assisi church.

"The list gets bigger and bigger," says his wife, Mary. It takes them a week to make all the deliveries.

As if he can't contain himself, Kane offers to send over some sugar cookies as I walk out the door.

Recipes

Gingerbread Cookie