Issue 8 · Week of October 26, 2026
Carrie Spezzano honors her Bluffer baking roots and shares a beloved family recipe
Four generations of baking, with roots in a Lake Bluff café. Lake Bluff resident Carrie Spezzano still has one of her grandmother’s blueberry pies in the freezer. It is no longer there for dessert. “I still have one in my freezer today, that is long past edible, but I love knowing it is there, and that she made it.” Her grandmother, Bernadine Rice Cascarano, made dozens of miniature blueberry pies each summer, just big enough for two people to share. She froze them and sent visitors home with one. Baking was a daily practice - fresh bread, cookies and pies - and the family tradition reaches back another generation, to Bernadine’s mother, Rose McMahon Rice.
According to family recollections, Rose and her husband, Fordyce Rice, moved from Waukegan to Lake Bluff in the early 1950s. After retiring from the Navy, Ford repaired watches and jewelry while overseeing Hastings Coffee Shop, which occupied the building that is now Inovasi restaurant. He later opened Rice’s Jewelry Store on Center Avenue. Rose baked in their downtown apartment, supplying cakes, pastries and pies for the café. She also made birthday cakes and other sweets for celebrations at the Lake Bluff Children’s Home. Bernadine carried that baking into her own household. She and her husband, Tony Cascarano, raised their family in Lake Forest, including Carrie’s mother, Sherry. “She loved bite-sized desserts, and always made tarts and bon bons, and lots of other candies,” Carrie recalls. “From puff pastry, to pumpernickel, to stollen, and decorated cookies, she made it all.”
For birthday teas, Bernadine made the scones, strawberry jam and lemon curd. At Christmas, she baked 30 small gingerbread houses. Anthony helped assemble them on cardboard cake rounds, and the family gathered for homemade Italian beef sandwiches, soup and decorating, with every kind of candy available for construction.
Carrie’s education extended well beyond dessert. “She taught me how to can fruit, how to debone a whole chicken and how to always use a little bit of vodka in your pie crust to make it tender.” Sherry continued the homemade birthday cakes, breads, sweets and family dinners. Today, Carrie cooks and bakes for her own family, too. One recipe shared across the generations was pecan rolls, a favorite of Rose’s that Bernadine also made often. Years ago, Carrie spent weeks typing her grandmother’s handwritten recipes into a keepsake book for the family. The instructions required a certain amount of inherited knowledge. “The recipes are all written for someone who already understands how to bake and cook,” Carrie says, “because most of them include the ingredients, and some vague instructions, assuming the person using the recipe can fill in the blanks.”
Mom’s Pecan Rolls
