Look, this isn’t a real post. It’s just me sharing a story that might help you if you’ve been in my same predicament.
When I was little my great grandmother (on my mom’s side) used to make the most incredible peach cobbler but she absolutely refused to share the recipe with anyone because the women in my family all fought over who got to make the food to family gatherings and she didn’t want anyone else to be able to bring it. (One time there was a family feud that broke out over three kinds of stuffing being brought to Thanksgiving and the stuffing you chose to put on your plate was like picking your biker gang. I took a small scoop of all three and my aunt was like, “You tiny coward.” Which was totally fair.)
Great Mamaw wouldn’t write down the recipe or let anyone in the kitchen when she baked it but when she was in her 90s she finally started to share some of her recipes with her daughter (my granny) but by that time the dementia was heavy and she couldn’t remember how to make it anymore. One time we went to her house so granny could watch her make it and we were like, “Why is the cobbler green? Is it supposed to fizz like that?” And granny whispered “NO ONE EAT THE COBBLER” because turns out mamaw insisted in baking lime jello into it and we all had to take a big spoonful and throw it out the back door when she wasn’t looking. My point here is that when she died, the beloved family peach cobbler of my childhood died with her, and for the last 40 years my sister and I have eaten every peach cobbler we could find in the hopes of finding hers. Every time I try one my kiddo (Hailey) and my husband are like “Is that it?” and it never is.
BUT! Last week I got a text from my sister that she thought she may have solved the great cobbler mystery! Turns out, our great aunt Albina (on my father’s side) had shared her recipe for peach cobbler in her old church cookbook before she died and Lisa thought that maybe since both women grew up in the same era and town perhaps they’d both gotten the recipe from the same place, so she went to work trying it out and experimenting and finally sent me the recipe with her notes.
Baking is a science I never mastered but Hailey loves it so they (and their sweetheart, Laurel) got busy on New Years Eve making us the famous peach cobbler from scratch.
Honestly, watching them make it was worth it alone because they crack me up.
And after an hour of “How do you dry peaches?” “Can I use forks instead of a pastry blender?” How do you ‘cut in’ shortening?” “How do you ‘braid’ dough? “WHY DON’T YOU HAVE TOOTHPICKS? FUCK IT, I’LL USE CHOPSTICKS” Hailey pulled it out of the oven and everyone stared at me in a suspenseful silence and I was like, “It smells exactly right but I remember hers having a sugary top?” and Hailey yelled, “OH NO. I FORGOT TO BRUSH IT WITH SUGAR AND BUTTER” and I was like, “It’s fine, I’ll just melt some butter and sugar and we’ll put it back in the oven” but I accidentally used salted margarine and the microwave didn’t melt it properly and everyone kind of stared in horror as I dumped globs of goo on the top while making a mess, but honestly it totally worked and felt like a nod to Great Mama’s forgetfulness. And when it came out of the oven the second time it was perfect and when I bit into it I literally cried. Like, have you ever been craving something for 40 years and finally get it again and it’s just as good as you imagined and it kind of heals you a little? Because, yeah.
So this whole thing is just to say that if you have a secret family recipe…let this be your sign to share it now. Don’t gatekeep that shit, friend.
And speaking of sharing…here is the recipe for our peach cobbler:
We used canned peaches and it was fine, but if you really want to do it like my great mamaw you need to can the peaches yourself from your peach trees and store them in your storm cellar for so many years that they get extra sweet and a little mushy in a way that might indicate that you’re going to die from botulism. Why did those peaches always taste better?
Special thanks to my great mamaw (below in b&w with her husband) and to my great aunt Albina (below, surrounded by two of her sisters, including my grandmother. They were always giggling together and I don’t know about what because they seldom did it in English but this picture always makes me smile) and to the 1999 Wall Brethren Church Christian Sisters Cookbook.
Happy cobblering.
What a great story! I make my great grandma’s pecan pie which really is just the karo Syrup recipe but mixing fake & light half and half. But I still love it.
That’s such a wonderful story. It bothers me a lot that nothing lasts forever.
My grandpa’s favorite nut bread makes an appearance at every Thanksgiving because I insist on it. My mother made me a cookbook when I got married that has all the family recipes. Most are from magazines and newspapers, but I don’t care – they’re our favorites!
Oh my gosh, the timing of this post is a but eerie, but very appreciated. I was just saying last night how much I miss my grandmother (she passed over 10 years ago) and her cooking, including her peach cobbler, but I don’t have the recipe. And the picture of yours looks exactly like hers. Thank you so much for sharing this, you have given me hope! I can’t wait to try this.
I absolutely LOVE this! Congratulations to you and your sister! 😊 Carry On with the Delicious Peachy Goodness! 💛
I love seeing old pictures where everyone is wearing corsages and smiling. My mom and grandmother always had one for all the big holidays. Love that you recaptured a recipe. That is the best feeling ever.
This might be my favorite of your posts ever, even if it isn’t a real post. Cheers to you and your family esp. Great Mamaw and Great Aunt Albina!!
Yes, food memories make me weep with joy.
There’s a recipe, for a special Italian Christmas Cookie, that my Nonna used to make.
Struffoli.
Some people would make the cookie, and then do honey syrup.
No, my Nonna made a time consuming, painstaking, back breaking raisin syrup, in which to drown the cookies.
Did she share the complete recipe with anyone?
No.
Did she share parts with her to favorite grandchildren?
She tried.
Guess who got the “time consuming, painstaking, back breaking raisin syrup, in which to drown the cookies” part of the recipe?
And, guess which cousin failed to show up on their day to learn the cookie.
Leave us to say the recipe for the syrup isn’t available online, whilst the cookie recipe is pretty much available on any Italian Cookie website.
:::wanders off enjoying her Struffoli, knowing that her cousin ain’t going to get any (Ha ha ha haaaaaa haaaaaaa!):::::
I’m such a kitchen slut, I make peach cobbler with canned peaches and Bisquick.
For one whole summer, my best friend and I shadowed her mother in the kitchen. She was a great cook, but she didn’t have any recipes. It was all by touch, taste, and smell. “Cook it ’til it’s done. Salt it ’til it smells right.” We watched her like hawks, and wrote down everything she did. I treasure those recipes, even though I don’t make them anymore.
I went through something similar with my mom’s corn chowder recipe. I went over 15 years craving it until one day I found one that sounded similar enough to what I remembered to use it as a jumping off point and now I’ve been able to perfect it and it’s a family favorite now. I also stated hand writing all my recipes that I have developed over almost 30 years of cooking as an adult and made each of my kids their own family cookbook that can be added to by each generation. I’ve even scanned ones from family members that are no longer we with us for them, too.
That is very very cool. What language did they speak? My mother’s side is from Germany (escaped in 1939). My Opa (grandpa) and great aunt both grew up in Alsace-Lorraine (BEFORE WWI) so they spoke French and German. I know my mother had my aunt’s quiche lorraine recipe but I couldn’t find it. No quiche tasted as good. Got the recipe from my cousin and wow that is the real thing! My daughter made one recently for a holiday party and it was gone in less than an hour! Family recipes DO matter!
This is amazing! My mother’s family got back the lost secret recipe for the spice quickbread we all have to have or it’s not the holidays when my grandmother, who really was psychic (she was part if a famous Harvard parapsychology study and everything) had a dream where she was watching her mother make it. She wrote it all down the minute she woke up, and voila we had it back!!
My sister and I have been trying every thumbprint cookie recipe that we can get our hands on, but over 25 years later, we still haven’t found the one Granny used. Her cookie was some type of butter cookie, but it was soft? And instead of jam, she used a maraschino cherry. We pourwd through every cookbook of hers after she died but none of them were even close.
YES! Definitely don’t gatekeep that. A couple years ago when my MIL passed I took her favorite recipes and copied them into a Lulu cookbook for my husband’s family and the kids (typed the recipes but put pics of her handwritten recipe cards and instructions in) because that shit needs to be shared and saved. Traditions die if we don’t nurture them. Also that looks yummy!
Thanks for sharing your story and your recipe. I have printed both so it will never be lost again!
Southern women, I swear. My great aunt on my father’s side refused to share her family’s chicken and dumplings and her crab cakes recipes. When she and her husband moved in with my folks so Auntie could be cared for in her final days, her husband made her give the recipes to my mom so she could make them for him. (This was late 1940’s.) From all accounts, she was seriously pissed.
Irony is, my mom hated cooking and wasn’t particularly good at it, but she’d make the chicken and dumplings a few times a year for family gatherings and we loved them. She shared it with me and I am sharing it with my nieces (and nephews, should they ask for it.) I’m grateful to auntie’s husband.😄
My former mother in law refused to write anything down, and she didn’t measure anything, and she wouldn’t have me over to watch her cook, so her recipes died with her. Her only child, my ex husband will never again taste her food, which is a shame. Losing your family recipes is a loss that reminds you of the loved ones who you have lost, and it’s a miracle if you can recreate them or find them again.
Congratulations on finding your special recipe!
YES!!! My grandma used to make jams and jellies. I remember the taste of one like it was yesterday tasting it, but I have NO IDEA what it was. I’ve tried for years to figure it out, but I have had zero luck. About 40 years here as well. I’d give anything to taste that just one more time. 😢
I love this story. I love the fact that Hailey is so much better and making this cobbler!❤️❤️❤️
ALBINA PLAGENS is a masterful nom de plume.
Thank you for the most joyful post of 2026! I know it’s early yet, but I honestly doubt anything is going to top it! Off to try your Great Mamaw’s recipe.❤
My grandma had this biscuit recipe that she made and I loved them but she passed away before I wanted to learn how to make it (I was 16 when she died). I had to be hospitalized once and then when I was well enough to go home, my mom was there and asked if I was hungry. I said yes and she’s like, “I’ll just make grandma’s biscuits.” I freaked out — she knew the secret recipe ?!?
Y’all, it was on the side of the bisquick box.
I ended up making my dad’s Dutch stollen recipe out of fury this year. I had resigned myself to not making it due to depression and overwhelming grief from losing my mom early 2025. That is until we went to a Christmas market and some punk was trying to sell what was arguably really just a brick covered in powdered sugar and it made me so mad that I woke up the next day and baked the most perfect stollen I have ever made. We lost dad in 2017, but mom continued his tradition of making it until she was no longer able to because of her Alzheimers. I took it over then but this year it still felt too raw. I even heard her voice in my head saying “more fruit!”. Next goal is to figure out dad’s croquettes.
I made my great grandmother’s almond tarts for Christmas this year, and emailed my British family (that she came from) that I had done so, and it’s such a lovely thing to connect over. It’s a way of keeping the generations connected, even after the ones before us have gone. Plus, yum.
What an absolute treasure!!! You, your great grandma, Hailey and their partner making it, and finally having this wonderful recipe and cobbler after all this time! I can’t love this more!! ❤️❤️❤️
My mother had the habit of teaching each of us kids her recipes slightly differently and then will later claim that she “NEVER” puts X in her recipe and she has no idea why we do so. I was also lucky enough to learn my grandmother’s version of Yorkshire pudding and meat pie. I have been sure to share her secrets though. I do so miss her.
Were they of Polish descent?
I read that as “happy clobbering” at the end there and, honestly, yeah.
Congrats on finding it and HELL YEAH to Hailey and Laurel for their heroic work in the kitchen. Enjoy your cobbler and Happy New Year.
Jenny!!! Bless you!!! My family *doesn’t* have a peach cobbler recipe, but I love peach cobbler, and the only place I like it from is in Memphis (I live in the Chicago area), and I’m for sure going to try this! I’m so glad the mystery has been solved. That’s a lot of years to be missing the glory of peach cobbler.
What a great story!
Also, I thought it had just been in the back of someone’s freezer for forty years and wondered if you were brave enough to eat it.
I mean, I probably would eat a forty year old frozen cobbler, but I wouldn’t, like, announce it unless I had to go to the emergency room or something.
@1, Cathy:
my Grannie used light Karo and my babička used dark karo, so when my mom made pecan pie, she used half of each. 🙂
Last year I gave everyone well every family a collection of family favorite recipes. Including ones from my great grandmother, my mom, an aunt and even some from friends of my ago.
So happy you found it!
My grandmother had a recipe that she didn’t want to share with the family, but her sisters in law bullied her until she did. Which is bad, but then their house burned down and the recipe would have been lost if she hadn’t shared it, so … a rare pro-bullying story? Kind of?
Thank you for the laughs! I’ve spent all day looking for my mother’s chocolate mousse recipe that doesn’t exist. Turns out I had the recipe originally and sent it to her 15 years ago. No idea where it is now.
As my mother was in hospice care, my brother and I made sure to ask her how she made her sugar cookies, how she made her BBQ sauce, etc. I forgot to ask about the wheat germ muffins! I finally found a very similar recipe online (no bran but with molasses) after searching through every cookbook she had.
My good friend always told me about her Mom’s delicious cooking which was never shared. I left home and my Mom sent recipes to me so that I could have her home-cooking at my place. I started a recipe book for my kids when they were ten and twelve knowing they need to continue the family legacy of delicious food. Thanks for shating the peach cobbler recipe. I’ll add that recipe with a reference to your great grandmother because we need to know who to thank as we drool over every bite.
I know exactly how you feel. My grandma made blackberry cobbler. When she passed away, I didn’t try cobbler for years. The first time I did, it was a country store cobbler that tasted all wrong. I broke into tears after one bite. I’ve learned to make my own since then, and found a couple places that make it the right way.
OMG! and I thought only our family had odd recipes that no one can recreate. My paternal grandma’s turkey stuffing is ine of those. We ALL watched to see what she added, and you know what, it wa different EVERY damn time, but still tasted the same! The spices were the same, as was cornbread. And not that kind w/sugar but real southern cornbread. The rest…one year she added gingersnaps and it still tasted the same. So good for you in finding the secret. My family is still searching.
OH BEST story. Love to all those who bake those memories. Happy New Year!!
I still make my great grandmother’s banana “bread” that is really banana cake… which I always bake as muffins. The recipe is at least 125 years old due to her living near where bananas were shipped into the US from Central America. I taught my kids how to bake with that recipe. I’ve reworked the recipe over the years, swapping words like “oleo” for “butter”, listing the ingredients in the order they are needed in the recipe, and changing cups to grams. I even updated the method from alternating wet and dry when I realized she was mixing by hand instead of using an electric mixer, but we all agreed to put it back in as a nod to her, even if the final product was much the same. It is still my kids’ favorite, and they each have a copy – with the original version at the end so they can remember the history behind the recipe.