For most of my childhood, we lived 1,500 miles away from my maternal grandparents and were only able to see them every few years. For that reason, I have very few memories of them. What I do remember were their thick accents and the treats they greeted us with when we visited them–European chocolate bars and fresh birdie buns with butter and strawberry jelly. If you aren’t familiar with birdie buns, they are delicious sweet buns that are shaped to look like a bird asleep with its head tucked under its wing.
My grandmother, about whom I am slowly writing a book, was of German descent but lived in Communist Ukraine during WWII. Her family had very few modern conveniences, and her childhood with one of loss, lack, and uncertainty. My grandfather was Austrian and also had a very difficult upbringing–his home was bombed, and he lost both his parents at a young age.
At that time in the United States and Canada, you could easily visit buy a loaf of bread from the local grocery store, but my grandmother’s family had to make all their bread from scratch. My grandmother passed away 10 years ago, but in her honor, I recently made a batch of birdie buns using her recipe (birdie bun recipe below). They tasted exactly as I remember!…