Now as food editor for Hallmark Magazine, Slate remembers those days while considering which holiday recipes she should publish. Adults mostly read the magazine and search for cooking ideas on its Web site, but the recipes she includes are easy and fun for kids to join in, she says.

"Kids like to eat candy. It's pretty much a no-brainer," she says. "Depending on how old they are, they can do these recipes."

They include snowball cookies rolled in coconut and Grandma Wentworth's Buckeye Balls, which are part cookie, part chocolate treats that look like giant acorns.

Slate's favorite: chocolate bark.

The principle, she says, is very simple: You melt baking chips, stir in a crunchy ingredient and a fruity one, let the mixture harden, and break it into pieces. (For recipes with different types of ingredients, go to HallmarkMagazine.com.)

Jeff Houck