Chef Andreas Carver and his mother recreate his late grandmother’s vintage cherry winks Christmas cookies

Amissa Pitter

The co-founder of The Aphrodisiac Kitchen talks about continuing traditions and shares his fondest holiday memories.

Video Transcript

ANDREAS CARVER: You said I'm looking at you, right? OK, OK, cool.

CHRISTINA CARVER: Should I say Christina or Tina?

ANDREAS CARVER: Whichever you prefer.

CHRISTINA CARVER: OK. Christina sounds better.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I always cooked for Christmases if we were away from the family here in North Carolina.

ANDREAS CARVER: I mean, now I've kind of taken over the reins of the kitchen.

CHRISTINA CARVER: He has. We cook differently now. We don't cook all the Southern recipes. I wouldn't normally eat cherry winks now. Josh mentioned the cherry winks, and, of course, I was like, oh, my gosh. I don't even know how to make those. I'm really excited that Joshua's gonna teach me how to make cherry winks.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

["WHAT CHILD IS THIS" PLAYING]

ANDREAS CARVER: Cherry winks are a 1950s recipe. Somehow, my grandmother got the recipe. I don't know where she got it from. Every year, she made them, and they would be in, like, a little Santa Claus cookie jar.

CHRISTINA CARVER: Mm-hmm.

ANDREAS CARVER: She passed, was it four years ago--

CHRISTINA CARVER: Mm-hmm.

ANDREAS CARVER: --now? Yeah, we haven't had them. And then, last year, I decided to get the recipe from, like, a handwritten card and continuing the tradition, even though they're weird and kind of ugly.

CHRISTINA CARVER: [LAUGHS] She was perfect at everything she did-- the Christmas tree, the table, everything.

ANDREAS CARVER: She really thought about things. She wanted everything to look good, and she saw a beauty in a lot of things. And, yeah, she was sick. [LAUGHS]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So you start with your dry ingredients. This is about 2 and 1/4 of sifted flour. And then we have some baking soda, some baking powder, and salt.

Mix the things together. We're gonna chop our nuts and dried dates. So we're gonna start by chopping our pecans. We're gonna do a rough chop of our dates.

We're going to go ahead and beat the eggs and the shortening and make sure that they're well creamed. And then we will combine the two.

CHRISTINA CARVER: It was a family tradition that-- something that she made every single year. And she never taught us how to make them. So I've never-- you know, everything else that she made, I pretty much know how to make. But this is one recipe that I've never-- I've never baked.

ANDREAS CARVER: In the original recipe, she was probably using some sort of canned sweet milk.

CHRISTINA CARVER: Yeah.

ANDREAS CARVER: But now we're using oat milk.

CHRISTINA CARVER: [LAUGHS]

ANDREAS CARVER: We're gonna take the--

CHRISTINA CARVER: Flour?

ANDREAS CARVER: Yep, and add that in.

CHRISTINA CARVER: I can imagine Mom making these.

ANDREAS CARVER: [CHUCKLES]

The maraschino cherries. So we'll just cut these in half because we're gonna top the cookies with a little maraschino cherry. And we're also gonna roll them in these corn flakes. So then we're gonna want to scoop them, put them in the corn flakes, roll them around, and then put this on top. OK. Now we're just gonna--

CHRISTINA CARVER: Just gonna put these on top, correct?

ANDREAS CARVER: Put them right there. Mm-hmm. And that's it. So then they just go into the oven for 10 to 12 minutes until they've expanded a little bit, slightly golden brown.

CHRISTINA CARVER: Mm. They're good.

ANDREAS CARVER: A little bigger than Mom's, but--

CHRISTINA CARVER: Mm-hmm.

ANDREAS CARVER: --the crunch on these are nice.

CHRISTINA CARVER: Definitely.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You did help her, right before she died, the Christmas before she died--

ANDREAS CARVER: Yeah.

CHRISTINA CARVER: --remember her watching you set the table, put--

ANDREAS CARVER: Yeah, yeah.

CHRISTINA CARVER: --in her wheelchair.

ANDREAS CARVER: Yeah, right before she passed, we-- you know, by this point, it was hard for her to get around. So she just wanted the table to be fixed. And so I helped orchestrate that.

CHRISTINA CARVER: Down to the napkins.

ANDREAS CARVER: Yeah, yeah.

CHRISTINA CARVER: The tablecloth.

ANDREAS CARVER: Yeah. You know, she was--

CHRISTINA CARVER: She was an artist.

ANDREAS CARVER: Yeah.

CHRISTINA CARVER: So everything she did brought a flair to it, I guess.

ANDREAS CARVER: And we loved her for that.