Paula Rees was more than a little taken with the cookies that her friend Donna Campagna brought to church a few years back. "I asked if I could have the recipe and she said, 'Sure, it was my mother's.' "
When it came time for The Baltimore Sun's holiday cookie contest, Rees asked her friend if she could submit the recipe in honor of Campagna's mother, Isabel Bross. These were the cookies that our judges deemed to be the best out of a strong field: Isabel's Cherry Date Skillet Cookies.
"I'm not a tremendous cook, and the wonderful thing is that these are made on the stove, not in the oven, so you can be baking something else in the oven while you make them," said Campagna, who, like Rees, lives in Columbia. "And they're kind of hard to mess up."
Campagna said her mother got the recipe about 40 years ago from a woman who worked for Campagna's father, Steward Bross, an attorney in New York. They were a hit, and Isabel Bross, who died in 2005, made them every Christmas.
"She was a good cook. I can't cook the way my mother did," Campagna said. "I think she would be pleased that the recipe she gifted all of us for so many years went on to others.
"One of the wonderful things in life is that continuum. Traditions are just warm blessings for all of us, don't you think?"