Without the personal touch, a wedding can feel like a catered business event.

John Beale, Post-Gazette Caterer Rania Harris rolls Greek Wedding Cookies (Kourambedes) into walnut-sized balls to be shaped into bells as her daughter, Porter, inserts a clove representing the bell's clapper. The cookies are baked and doused with powdered sugar while still hot. Click photo for larger image. Two tips from Rania As an aid to seating arrangements, the list of guests, printed on a computer Excel spreadsheet, was color-coded for those who invited them: pink for Porter, blue for Peter, yellow for Peter's parents and green for Rania and Stephen. Before the RSVP cards were slipped into the invitations, a number corresponding to the guests' names was written on the flap of the envelope. "Sometimes people forget to tell us their name," Rania said. "We had four who forgot."

When Stephen and Rania Harris' daughter, Porter, was married July 30, Rania had every resource in her business, Rania's Catering, to have the cookies baked by her staff.

"This was one of the things I wanted to do myself," she said.

When we arrived July 26, the butter was out on the island coming to room temperature. And then the Mt. Lebanon cooking teacher began her lesson.

This was a classic scene from ethnic cooking. She had no written recipe. Recipes are often passed from generation to generation.

Her mother-in-law, the late Pota Harris, had taught her to cook, and this recipe for Greek Wedding Cookies, or Kourambedes, is one she passed on.

Now Rania was passing it on to us.

"You can see why I had to show you," said Rania, a person so well-known her first name says it all.

A former employee said she remembered when Rania was just getting started, and she went around town, kids in tow, handing out cookies.

The business Rania started when her children were small has spiraled her persona toward the stardom of a celebrity chef, though not without a lot of hard work and business sense. Today, she owns Rania's Catering in Scott, as well as Rania's to Go in Mt. Lebanon's Central Square, also the site for her cooking classes.

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She is well-known for TV appearances on "The Jerome Bettis Show" during football season, and she recently did a grilling show for the Pirates. She tested the Steelers' recipes for the "Heinz Field Cookbook," adding many of her own, and she is working on a "Heinz 57" book of recipes and tips.

For this class, she shaped the Kourambedes into bells. At her side was daughter Porter, and soon she was inserting cloves to make the bell's clapper.

Some things about a wedding have to have the personal touch of a mother and her daughter.

As the sign that hangs in her kitchen says, to Rania Harris, "Chefs are known for cooking up love."

Details: Rania's Catering, 412-531-2222.

Kourambedes (Greek Wedding Cookies)

• 1 pound unsalted butter
  
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  
• 1 egg yolk
  
• About 4 cups flour
  
• 1 box powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whip butter for 15 minutes in mixer with paddle attachment. When the butter almost turns white, add sugar and beat well. Mix in walnuts and egg yolk. Add flour gradually until a soft dough forms. It should be neither hard nor sticky. (The humid day Rania mixed the cookies, she used about 4 1/4 cups of flour.)

Roll dough into balls the size of a walnut. Drop on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Press lightly with fingertips to flatten a little. With two fingers, one on each side of the circle, press sides to shape into bell. With palm of hand, press bottom of dough to form straight line (that's the bottom of the bell). Insert a clove in the middle of the bottom to make the bell's clapper.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until slightly brown at edges. Fill pan with powdered sugar and drop hot cookies into sugar to coat well. Dust with additional powdered sugar. Refresh with more powdered sugar before serving.

Makes 50 to 55 cookies.

-- Rania Harris