Sossie Beile's Little Plum Crumb Bars

Author Notes: Growing up, it sometimes seemed as if my sisters and I were the only kids on the block without a Grandma. Grandmothers were all around us: visiting friends of ours at holiday time, taking kids to movies, baking them cookies. Not us. In my only picture of our grandmother, my mother, as a wide-eyed little girl, sits beside her, hair neatly plaited in two little braids, wearing her best dress and a hand-crocheted collar. Next to her sits my grandmother, her soft brown eyes looking off into the future. My mother was perhaps seven when she and Grampa lost her. She was loved and missed by all who knew her. I grew up eating these buttery, crumbly bars, never suspecting their source; we knew not to ask too many questions in our family. So last night, when I called my mother for the recipe, I was surprised to learn that they were not Betty Crocker's, not Mrs. G.'s; they were my grandmother's. Not that my mother knew the measurements or amounts. She says she watched her mother make them as a very little girl, time and time again. When she (and Grampa) finally escaped to this country to start a new life, she married and had a family, She reconstructed this recipe from her childhood memories. I'm so happy to have just one "handed down" recipe and to share it here. This is my variation on the original, Cherry crumb cake. - creamtea

Makes one 7 1/2 x 11 pan of bar cookies

• This recipe was entered in the contest for Your Best Holiday Confection