The world around her is moving fast, but Yvette Marquez-Sharpnack knows how to slow down.

She uses food as a conduit to connection.

Two days each year, she whips up her favorites for one person in particular: her late grandmother, Jesusita Soza, who lived to be 98.

“For me, it’s more about the person who you’re honoring and the food that reminds you of them,” she said. “And so in teaching my kids, it was the perfect holiday to be like, ‘OK, this is my grandma. This is your grandma. And these were her favorite foods.’”

On Día de los Muertos, Marquez-Sharpnack has been able to connect three generations of her family in a single bite of food.

We’ve included two of her Día de los Muertos recipes for decorative Mexican sugar skulls and mini lemon sugar skull cakes here, as well as a recipe

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