I used to kick-box. A lot. And I loved to brag about it.

What’d you do today? Oh, not much, just worked. And kick-boxed…

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there was a point when all of the runs up and down Chicago’s lakeshore just didn’t cut it. Seems I had plenty of pent-up punches to get out of me, and better the open air take the hits.

Most of the time my inner kick-boxer is tame, but I know that she comes straight out of the Abood genetic cocktail. We are wired for action, and even more so for reaction. It’s a high blood pressure sort of a thing (but mine is low, at least for now; hurray for Mom’s genes), a high-intensity, stress-inclined personality that has its benefits and drawbacks. It’s an Abood hallmark (is that not true, cousins?).

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Aunt Hilda, like her siblings, did not escape the tumult either. I couldn’t help thinking about that when I was making my way through her and Sitto’s ma’moul recipes recently.

Aunt Hilda always said she wasn’t a baker, yet she got after baklawa and ma’moul—beautifully molded, meltaway butter cookies stuffed with nuts or dates—like nobody’s business (not to mention her strawberry-whipped cream cake, one I’d kickbox my way to dip a fork into once again). Those aren’t exactly rookie pastries to master, and the ma’moul in particular takes some doing.

I’m surprised that the finer points of stuffing the heaven-soft ma’moul butter dough, shaping the cookies and then molding them in their special wooden forms held interest for Hilda, for not being a baker. But then perhaps the most crucial aspect of making ma’moul—releasing the cookies from the molds—was a real attraction: Dust the mold with flour, fill it with a nut-stuffed ball of dough to make the impression, then slam the mold face down against the (sturdy) table two or three times, until the cookie comes out.

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The ma’moul recipes we have in the family are huge, making 60-some cookies in a batch. My sense is that Hilda didn’t mind a bit the quantity, both for the beautifully wrapped trays she used to give along with her baklawi every Christmas, and, now I know, for all of the whacking she could get out of every big batch she made. I’ve been whacking away myself, wondering why I didn’t ma’moul my troubles away long ago.