November 25, 1998
'Cookie Ladies' offer the real thing
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
The secret is the butter.
Well, it's no secret, really. Just the old fashioned way of making Christmas cookies, harking back to the days before 'low fat' and 'healthy' became the watchwords of holiday indulgence.
This was the time before the ascendance of margarine and other synthetic ingredients, says Patty Fabian, a Peninsula Township resident who collects cookbooks from the 30s and 40s and is an aficionado of bygone Christmas cookie recipes.
"I remember how good these recipes were when I was a kid," said Fabian, a Chicago native who moved to Traverse City three years ago. "I never found these recipes elsewhere. They've changed the ingredients now to make them easier to make."
Fabian teamed up with her friend Terry Hooper, co-owner of Old Mission Orchard Kitchen, to create the Old World Bakery line of Christmas cookies this year. The idea for a Christmas cookie business began last Christmas when Fabian gave Hooper a sampling of her cookies as a gift. Fabian has been giving away such gifts to friends and colleagues for decades since she started baking on her own in high school.
Hooper, an experienced caterer and owner of a farm kitchen, began to think others would love these cookies.
"She gave me the cookies last year and I just wanted to eat every one, and I'm not a sweets person," said Hooper. "They are wonderful."
Old World Bakery uses original cookie recipes from Fabian's Polish grandmother, including Kolochki and Berliner Kranze, as well as other traditional German, Swedish and Polish cookies culled from her cookbook collection. Even the names of these cookies roll off the tongue lusciously: Pfeffernusce, Chocolate Cherry Drops, Nutmeg Logs, Walnut Slices and Chocolate Kringles.
Besides butter, Fabian and Hooper use only fresh ingredients - no imitation vanilla please! - and grind their own nutmeg and cinnamon or grate fresh lemon and orange zest for each batch. They sheepishly admit to using lard in one of the recipes, the only way to get the right texture in the cookie.
"We call these cookies 'sinfully delicious,'" said Fabian, who last summer won a pie contest and baked all the pies for Molly's Bye Golly for the season. "I learned to bake a lot of these cookies from my mother, hanging onto her apron strings. I love to bake, its just something you either love to do or you don't."
They make every cookie themselves in small batches in Hooper's farm kitchen, which she has used for catering and making jams, pies and candies for the past decade. Hooper's specialty is the decorating and catering end while Fabian concentrates on the baking and recipes.
"Since we're both artists we want them to look great," said Fabian, who owns the Artscapes graphic design firm.
Fabian and Hooper offer their cookies by the pound hand packed in tins. They are hoping the business meets a deep need for authentic Old World Christmas cookies. So far it is a unique market niche in town and they are preparing 60 orders this year and plan to expand to 300 next year.
Their marketing strategy for their inaugural year was simple: call friends and stuff mailboxes in their Peninsula Township neighborhoods. However, they are careful not to compete with their church or women's club cookie sales, both fixtures on the Old Mission Peninsula pre-Christmas scene.
"We're just stay at home moms who do many different things," said Hooper, who keeps very busy during the summer managing Hooper Farm Gardens and making floral arrangements for weddings. "We work our schedules around our kids and owning our own businesses is very important to that."