Lacey's Cornbread Dressing

Lacey Chabert has made her family’s cornbread dressing for so many years that she can bake it from memory. Finally getting it down on paper was a joint effort with her sister, even though it may not be exactly the same—they now use Jiffy mix instead of making the cornbread from scratch like her great-grandmother did.

The recipe, which once existed solely in the minds of the women in her family, originated with her great-grandmother. “It was passed down from her to my grandmother, to my mom, to me,” explains the Hallmark Channel actress. Chabert lived next door to her mother’s mother, “Nanny,” until she was 7 years old, and it was in Nanny’s house in Purvis, Mississippi, where she first learned how to prepare the dish.

“I have so many memories of growing up and being in the kitchen with my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. We made the same things every Thanksgiving and Christmas,” says Chabert. “The smell of cornbread dressing mingling with sweet potato casserole and pecan pie brings me back to my childhood and all the warmth and excitement of the holidays.”

It’s fitting that the actress is big on the season: Chabert is widely regarded as the queen of Hallmark Christmas movies. Her newest title with the network is Haul Out the Holly. While each winter seems to bring a festive new movie with it, Chabert’s holiday menus have stayed the same, with recipes that have been in her family for decades. “To me, these dishes are perfect,” she says. “I figure, why mess with them? I just follow the directions as well as I can.”

And when it comes to making her great-grandmother’s cornbread dressing, Chabert was given plenty of instruction. “It requires a lot of steps, but the end result is totally worth it,” she says.

For her, it’s all about keeping a special recipe alive. “Food—and the memory of preparing it—is just so comforting, especially when you realize you’ve passed down a tradition for four generations,” says Chabert. “It’s something I really cherish.”