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Bazetta cookie baker says her Old World recipes have ‘gone Hollywood’
Unique tradition turned into business with
By Ed Runyan
CORTLAND
Though you might not know it if you’ve always lived in Northeast Ohio, the idea of a “cookie table” at weddings or other such events is not a universal experience.
“The cookie table is a Northeast Ohio thing,” said Fran Moldovan of Bazetta Township, who has been baking and selling cookies for friends, weddings and other occasions for 20 years.
Though Northeast Ohio weddings typically feature a special table for cookies, that’s not the case in places as nearby as Columbus, she said.
Moldovan, who often is known by her nickname, Tootsie, says her business, Tootsie’s Cookies, has focused on providing “Old World” cookies that many others don’t – time-consuming and, in many cases, popular generations ago – and frequently known by the kind of folksy way they were handed down, such as “Anne Verbanic’s nut horns.”
Moldovan said her cookies often provoke the response: “These remind me of my grandmother’s.” She said that is perhaps because her recipes came from Moldovan’s mother, and many of them were made the way cookies were made years ago.
“A lot of women don’t bake anymore,” she said. “A lot of [the cookies] are labor intensive.” Her “puff pastry,” for example, takes two days to make.
Moldovan’s mother, Mary Ann, acquired many of the recipes from co-workers at the General Electric Trumbull Lamp plant on West Market Street, where she worked.
Moldovan’s cousin, Danny Ondejko, a Bazetta native who works as a greensman for Hollywood movies and television shows, recognized that Moldovan’s cookies might have an appeal among the Hollywood actors, actresses, production crew and executives he works with and suggested that they team up to send her cookies to Hollywood.
A greensman provides and cares for all of the live and artificial plants and other greenery on a movie set. For example, he worked on the 1990 Tim Burton movie “Edward Scissorhands,” with Johnny Depp playing a character who has scissors for hands.
Edward demonstrates his unique abilities while cutting shrubbery, ice and hair during the film, giving Ondejko, a Warren John F. Kennedy High School graduate, ample opportunity to demonsrate his abilities, Moldovan noted.
Ondejko proposed that Moldovan send some of her cookies to the current project he’s working on – a Netflix series called “Grace and Frankie” starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the title roles.
“He said, ‘Toots, we don’t have these cookies here,’” and he encouraged her to send some out so he could provide them on the set during production.
So Moldovan, who was preparing cookies for a wedding at the time, made extra to send out West, with the idea of introducing her product to a new market to see if it might catch on.
It would be the largest shipping project she had done, and it wasn’t without its challenges. She learned that the cost to ship more than 10 pounds of cookies – 17 dozen – to Los Angeles was expensive.
Then she learned that shipping fragile cookies requires a very specific type of shipping: Her attempt at using the U.S. Postal Service caused many of her creations to be damaged.
Still, her cousin was able to set out five or six trays of Tootsie’s Cookies one day in mid-August.
“They absolutely loved them,” she said. “They went wild because they don’t have those in California.” Moldovan, who also makes cookies, pies and pastries for a Cortland coffee shop called Coopers, said she thinks the project was a success.
“Whatever his next venture is, maybe we can ship them over again,” she said, adding that she’s excited that her cookies were appreciated by Hollywood types.
“To think the cookies were on a movie set in Hollywood,” she said. “I’m very grateful to my cousin for suggesting this.”
Though shipping is expensive, Moldovan said the higher prices for cookies in Los Angeles suggests there could be a market for her.
“He laughed when I told him they are $7 a dozen,” Moldovan said of her cousin’s reaction to the amount she charges here.
Even simple cookies appear to be priced at around $40 per dozen in Los Angeles, she said.