Winter 2024 | Edible Notables

Coming Up Cookies

Sierra Valley Grange hosts baking days.

At Sierra Valley Grange’s annual cookie-making event, the emphasis isn’t on decorated sugar cookies and traditional chocolate chip. Instead, the Chilcoot-Vinton, Calif.-based agricultural fraternity shares recipes for European specialty treats such as spiced biscuits from Belgium called speculaas and German springerle shortbread cookies, embossed with intricate scenes that feature such images as knights and jumping horses.

There’s even a shared gingerbread recipe the group uses to turn out stamped cookies that don’t puff up and blur the features, like many others.

The one-day baking event is held at Grange headquarters early in December and welcomes not only members but also friends of the organization (non-dues-paying people who like to help out when there’s a need).

“Some people, this is the only thing they do at the grange,” says Laural Colberg, the group’s lecturer.

Colberg, who once lived in Germany, has become quite adept at making springerle cookies using her hundreds of molds purchased from German flea markets. Some members bring recipes passed down through generations, representing faraway places such as Northern Italy and Amsterdam. Some cookie recipes are even so rare that only a handful of families in the world still make them. 

“You wouldn’t have access to those kind of things without this,” Colberg says of the event, which sees up to 20 bakers attend each year.

While many of the grange’s baking efforts benefit the community, local nonprofits, or its own fundraising goals, this one is a purely social gathering — and everyone gets to keep the cookies they make.

In November, the grange hosts a separate cookie effort, in which members are asked to bake at home and bring in goods to enjoy at the Christmas Craft Fair. They always donate the remaining sweets to a local church that sends them to military troops overseas. 

“We purposely now make too many cookies for the craft fair, so we’ll have all these cookies left over,” Colberg says. “We find a way to make it altruistic.” 

In the past, members also have made baskets of cookies to donate to raffles around town, often selecting molds that match a theme — for example, saluting soldiers for a Fourth of July event.

Every September, the group focuses on apple pies, baking 50-plus pies to sell. The money raised helps fund the grange’s community space and other expenses. Throughout the year, there also are canning efforts, often using what the community has in abundance. The group has received donations of everything from kiwis to green tomatoes, and all the donors ask for in return is a bit of what the grange makes with them. 

“You wouldn’t believe the recipes we’ve found and what we could do with green tomatoes,” Colberg says.

For details, visit Sierravalleygrange.org.