Sally Ann Shurmur: It's An Obsession Rooted In Flour, Sugar And Butter

Columnist Sally Ann Shurmur writes, “At first, it was just something else to look at on Facebook. Now, I am completely obsessed.”

As we pass the halfway point of Advent, also known as “He’s coming and you’re not ready!” it’s time to confess my newest and completely out of control obsession.

Cookies.

Peggy Jane the Mom made absolutely perfect, magical Christmases for us, but she didn’t bake Christmas cookies.

Neither did either grandma.

So I was always envious of women who worked full-time jobs and scheduled cookie baking on their calendars for early to mid-November.

I love cookies, always have.

So it came to pass that I was scrolling one day and found this thing called “The Wedding Cookie Table Community.”

It has more than 325,000 members worldwide and was founded in Pittsburgh, Pa., nine years ago by a woman who seems not to sleep and does most of her approving and posting in the middle of the night.

That’s handy for non sleepers like me, who sometimes get the inside track to quick approval and answers.

So for those not from Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Ohio, and northern West Virginia, here is a very brief history.

The cookie table at weddings has humble blue collar and immigrant roots, dating from a time when wedding cakes were not realistic financially. (Some might say they still aren’t).

So relatives of the couple would bring cookies to the wedding celebration, and those tables became more and more elaborate and part of family heritage.

They say that in that region, people don’t ask, “how was the wedding?” but “how were the cookies?”

There’s a whole offshoot cottage industry with elaborate decorations for cookie tables, signs explaining what a cookie table is, and take-home containers for guests at the end of the night.

Peggy Jane the Mom comes from Italian Pennsylvania coal miner roots, so maybe it was that - combined with my deep love of cookies- that first sparked my interest which has grown to an obsession.

Since the spring, I have purchased two enormous cookbooks produced by the group.

The books are the result of Wedding Cookie Table Colleges held in greater Pittsburgh, with vendors, demonstrations, and of course professionally designed cookie tables.

Who on earth knew that designing cookie tables could be a professional thing?

As with everything that starts out naively wholesome, there are issues even within the flour, sugar, butter clan.

I posted a question about a cookie I made that did not set up the way I expected and admitted to having reduced the amount of sugar.

Whew! I was scolded resoundingly that baking is a science and you can’t just arbitrarily mess with ingredients.

There is a great debate about when to “open” the cookie table. Some say they pay so much per plate for a sit-down meal that they don’t want appetites ruined before dinner.

I am in the “open it this minute” camp. If you have endured the Nuptial Mass and are waiting for the wedding party to take two hours of pictures, you damn well deserve a cookie with your glass of champagne.

Another issue deals with the over the top elaborateness of some of these cookie tables, which stretch across entire hotel ballrooms and often include thousands of cookies for one wedding. (Having enough to send everybody home with some at the end of the night is a thing, and some say to figure a dozen per person to take home. Find me that wedding please.)

Women spend months with spreadsheets and ingredient lists and full freezers and transporting to the reception site and I don’t blame them for wanting to post pictures of the finished tables.

But invariably, some grump has something to say, like “display needs more height,” or “I wouldn’t have put so many on one tray - looks crowded.”

As they say, come for the info, stay for the comments.

I have baked exactly one cookie this season and they are almost all gone.

But I have ingredients for about a jillion more, just waiting for my get-up to get up.

I have been hoarding baking supplies like a squirrel with a nut, just waiting for that time.

UPS brought cookies the other day that I remember from Nana’s house and can’t find locally.

Shockingly, they taste just like I remember them at Nana’s.

And honestly, that’s probably the same reason that more than 325,000 of us get together to look at photos, browse recipes, and all too rarely get glimpses of beautiful brides and Nuptial Masses.

Memories in a cookie. Worth every penny per pound of butter these days.