BY LINDA SCOTT
Christmas cookies of all shapes and sizes will be available for purchase during the annual Clarks Summit Fire Company Auxiliary’s 13th Cookie Walk on Saturday, Dec. 14 from 10 a.m. to noon at the fire station, 321 Bedford St.
People select the cookies and put them in containers. They take the containers to be weighed and each pound is $8.
“My daughter Roberta Flynn and I make seven dozen of one kind of cookie,” said Sue Wicks, treasurer. “We start baking the day after Thanksgiving and bake the following week. Last year, we made sugar cookies with candy cane pieces crushed in it. I have made supreme chocolate chip and white chocolate with cranberry cookies. My daughter has made gingerbread reindeer and spritzer Christmas trees. It is a good time with my daughter.”
The cookies are made by members of the auxiliary and family and friends in the community. Members of the Abington Heights Civic League also bake cookies. The auxiliary members make dozens of cookies individually, and they also make and decorate cut-out cookies as a group.
“I usually make ricotta cookies, Swedish butter cookies, white chocolate cranberry cookies and oatmeal butterscotch,” said Mari Bowen, vice president. “I’m also honored that each year, students from the Scranton School for Deaf and Hard of Hearing, from which I retired, make cookies as a way of giving back to the community. I enjoy participating in the cookie walk, which has become a staple holiday event. It’s fun watching people enter the festive banquet hall, filled with beautifully trayed cookies and fill their containers and watch the cookies disappear from the trays. I have often thought that it’d be fun to have a time lapsed video showing how quickly the cookies disappear from their trays.”
Nancy Ayers, president, who is on a gluten-free diet, says she enjoys making gluten-free cookies for other people with the same restriciton.
“I make standbys of gluten-free chocolate chip, peanut butter and snickerdoodles,” Ayers said. “Then some of my favorites are gluten-free raisins and coconut, chocolate coconut almond macaroons, gluten-free pumpkin with frosting, gluten-free crackles and gluten-free chocolate chunk blondies.
“A lot of people will start asking us in the summer if we are going to have it again. I think a lot of people are getting away from baking cookies, so this way they can still have homemade cookies without all the work. The cookie walk also gives us a chance to give something back to the community.”
Ayers added that some people will buy the group’s ready-made cookie trays to give as gifts.
“People start coming at 8 a.m., so come early,” said Wicks. “Everybody gets behind the cookie walk, and it is a lot of fun.”
The money raised from the cookie walk is given to the fire company to be used for equipment, training and for the upkeep of the fire hall.
The auxiliary is open to men and women and is looking for new members. The group meets at the fire station the second Monday of each month at 7 p.m. except for December.
