By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
For nearly 25 years now, Sue Shank’s Amish sugar cookies have been a staple for gatherings in Bowling Green. They are the sought-after sweet ending to birthday parties, baby showers, classroom parties, team festivities, weddings and even funerals.
“I think they are Bowling Green’s cookie,” Wood County District Public Library Director Michael Penrod said about the decision to auction off the cookies as part of the library foundation’s annual fundraiser last week.
“If you don’t have a grandma who makes cookies – you find Sue,” Penrod said.
Shank has been the “grandma” to many children in Bowling Green, babysitting for years in her home. She has retired from childcare, but still bakes up batches of the beloved sugar cookies on a regular basis.
Penrod is among the many who are glad Shank’s oven still turns out perfectly puffed up pillows of sweetness. He showed his appreciation by bidding big bucks on one of the boxes of cookies at the auction. After winning the bidding war, Penrod opened the box and passed them around.
“I got one cookie,” he said, figuring he spent $300 on that sweet treat. “It was well worth it.”
Penrod relayed a story from a retired teacher who said when an announcement was made at school about Shank dropping off cookies in the office, teachers would leave their classrooms to get the coveted treats.
As the bidding was going on last week, Shank was at home, receiving insider information from a couple friends at the auction. The five boxes of 15 cookies each sold for a total of more than $13,000 – or $181.94 per cookie. That’s a far cry from the $1.33 per cookie she now charges with the costs of powdered sugar, eggs and other ingredients going up.
One year, the cookies brought in more than $20,000 at the library auction, Shank said.
“It’s like a grandma’s cookie from the past,” she said.
The recipe for the Amish sugar cookies came from Shank’s mother-in-law, Shirley Shank.
“I always liked them,” though she said she doesn’t indulge in them much anymore.
Shank has perfected the process of making mass quantities of the cookies. It takes her about 2½ hours to make a “normal” batch of seven boxes of cookies – each with 15 large or 24 medium sized cookies. That includes time for mixing, baking and cleanup.
“I wish I could make them in my sleep,” she said as she iced a box of cookies for her niece’s baseball team picnic on Saturday.
The icing – which she makes in gallon size containers – takes about a half hour to coat the cookies.
Shank is not stingy with the sugar cookie recipe, which includes eggs, flour, sugar, vegetable oil, buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. But still many wanna-be cookie bakers have trouble getting it quite right.
“I know what I want my dough to look like,” so she tends to add a pinch here and there till it’s perfect. “That’s just the mystery of it.”
Shank is old-school in her baking – still using her grandma’s beat up, uneven cookie sheets with blackened edges.
“I don’t even time them. I just know what they should look like,” she said, acknowledging that she has had to toss out an occasional batch of overly browned cookies.
Shank isn’t really comfortable with her celebrity sugar cookie status. Over the years, she has been astounded by people recognizing her baking skills.
“They are so excited to meet me, and I’m thinking … really?”
There was a time years ago when Shank thought about making a business out of baking. But she was always busy taking care of families’ babies.
“And I’m too old now,” she said with a grin. But she still takes cookie orders. “I don’t advertise. It’s word of mouth.”
Shank has also cut back on the intricacies of her cookie decorations. She used to make icing Bobcats, Falcons and flowers. But her hands can no longer handle the hours of tedious decorating. When she was recently asked to put “Hello Kitty” figures on cookies, she politely declined.
“I tell them the simpler, the better,” she said.
Afterall, they still go down just as sweet.
