By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Fifteen bakers sat by their fresh batches of holiday cookies Monday evening watching for reactions as nearly 50 cookie lovers sampled the goodies at the Wood County District Public Library’s Holiday Bake and Taste event.
The in-person cookie baking and tasting event returned after being canceled because of the pandemic.
There were candy canes, seven-layer bars, sugar cookies, snickerdoodles and an assortment of chocolate chip cookies–to name a few–that tempted and treated the tasters. The bake-off tasters were given five tickets to vote as they pleased. They could vote for five different cookies, dropping a ticket in the paper bags set by the cookies and bakers, or they could give all five tickets to vote for their favorite cookier or favorite baker, or something in between, said Kristin Wetzel, information services director at the library.
Ultimately, Sherry Potocnak’s Hot Chocolate Cookies received the most votes to win the competition. It wasn’t her first time competing. Though she moved to Bowling Green only a few years ago, she won first place in the 2018 holiday cookies bake-off with chocolate-covered cherries and second place in 2019 with double Oreo delights.
Potocnak’s granddaughter Ava Nichter was there to give all her votes to her grandma’s cookies.
Grandpa Thom Headley planned to give his five tickets for the candy cane cookies baked by granddaughter Emarie, who also was one of the pianists from Vicki and Bethany Hoehner’s Piano Studio. About a dozen young musicians performed Christmas music as part of a holiday recital throughout the cookie tasting.
Second place honors went to Kathy Sweeney, whose lemon thyme cookies were a little outside the flavor box for a holiday cookie, but their uniqueness was a hit with cookie lovers. Sweeney was not much of a cookie baker before she moved to Bowling Green a couple of years ago.
Somewhere along the way, she started baking cookies for the post-sermon social time at the First Presbyterian Church. Sweeney seems to have found a niche, because the second cookie recipe she baked for the competition was also yummy. Pioneer Cookies weren’t a family recipe but one that a friend shared with her.
June Page, a member of the library’s Page to Table Cookbook Club, was coveting one of Sweeney’s pioneer cookies. “This was my favorite of all the cookies. It has the perfect cookie qualities for me—not too crispy, but not too soft,’ Page said.
Aunt Rosie’s sugar cookies, baked by Brenda Wagner, were said to have the consistency “like little pillows.”
And Leah Truman’s brown butter snickerdoodles had a nutty, sweet flavor, which she liked much better than traditional snickerdoodles. Truman admitted that the process to brown the butter properly takes some time, but “just when you think it’s not going to happen, it does.”
The mother-daughter team of Jill and Allison McMurray upped the holiday spirit a bit. In addition to tasty cake mix cookies and triple berry thumbprints, the duo was decked out in reindeer antlers and a blinking Christmas lights necklace. The thumbprint cookies were 13-year-old Allison’s pick that she baked just an hour before the start of the competition.
“This was our fifth year for competing,” the mom said, showing a photo taken of a much younger Allison with her older brother Corin. Previously Jill has baked pumpkin snickerdoodles, banana cookies and no-bake cookies, which didn’t win but were a big hit for the young piano players, she said.
Six-year-old Tucker Hetterick and his mom, Heather, decided to use his favorite candy – Reese’s Cups – to concoct their cookie entry this year. They baked triple Reese’s Cup Christmas cookies because Reese’s Cups are his favorite candy, his mom explained. Tucker loves to help in the kitchen, but he almost decided not to bake cookies this year. At this last minute, he told his mom that he was ready to bake for the friendly competition.
“What a great job,” Mrs. Claus said about tasting all the cookies. She also jingled her way through the crowd, posed for selfies with kids and adults alike, delivered the coveted first and second place prizes to the winners and led the group in a rounding rendition of “Jingle Bells” to close out the night.
