For M.L. Slater, a sixth-generation Ann Arborite, getting ready for Christmas has always meant baking “her” cookies. She’ll whip up some delicate cinnamon stars, but it’s springerle she’s most passionate about. They require a serious investment of time–four days from first starting the dough, then reworking it, then molding it into rows of traditional shapes that call to mind European life in a simpler time. She says sharing her cookies with family and friends makes it all worthwhile.
Slater remembers when cookie exchanges at local churches, clubs, and workplaces–and even just among family and friends–were a holiday ritual. So she’s dismayed to see them fading away. “Everyone’s getting so busy–we’re losing part of our German and Dutch heritage in this area, as well as the social aspect of networking around recipes and history rooted here,” she says. The loss is even more ironic since an Ann Arbor group served as inspiration for local author Ann Pearlman’s popular novel The Christmas Cookie Club and follow-up The Christmas Cookie Cookbook. Also, the U-M’s Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive is home to a vast storehouse of traditional recipes.
Slater isn’t resigned to the loss. She recently reached out to Kelly Vore, owner of Downtown Home & Garden, and asked if the store would help keep homemade cookie-baking traditions alive, as it does for canning of pickles and jams. Vore says the store is willing to be a venue, probably in early December 2016, to let people “come together, share baked goods, and resurrect an old-time way of sharing recipes.” Funds for charity will be raised at the event. Anyone interested in getting involved can send an email to info@downtownhomeandgarden.com.
Slater, meanwhile, will be making springerle with her six-year-old granddaughter this year. Sharing a favorite recipe is about personal expression, she says, and it’s also about love.
