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A sweet Mahoning Valley tradition: cookies outshine cake at local weddings
By Sarah Lehr
YOUNGSTOWN
At a typical Mahoning Valley wedding, the cake takes a back seat to plates and plates of cookies.
Cookie tables – a staple of local nuptials – are foreign to most outside of Youngstown or Pittsburgh.
Though servers won’t offer the cake until after dinner, cookies are up for grabs throughout the reception. As a result, the cookie table seems more like fodder for continual snacking rather than strictly dessert.
It’s far from rude for guests to take cookies to go. In fact, some couples provide customized takeout boxes or bags especially for that purpose.
Christina Benton, owner of Just Pizzelles bakery in Cortland, specializes in a cookie table favorite.
Pizzelles are thin Italian wafer cookies imprinted via a special iron with a lacy design. Traditionally, pizzelles are flavored with vanilla and anise, an herb that tastes like licorice.
Along with old-school pizzelles, Benton sells close to 90 other pizzelle flavors. Benton acknowledged that many children dislike the customary anise pizzelle. Her most popular offerings include rocky road, nonalcoholic margarita and white chocolate salted pretzel.
Colorful pizzelles, she said, enliven a cookie table otherwise populated by muted shades of brown and beige. Benton will work with couples to coordinate pizzelles to match their wedding colors.
Cookie tables were the highlight of a wedding when Mark Ladd was growing up. He was born on the South Side of Youngstown to Slovak parents.
Ladd, who now lives in Albuquerque, N.M, has struggled to convey the importance of cookie tables to his spouse, who grew up in Connecticut.
“I fondly remember seeing grandmothers carefully wrap the cookies daintily, then chuck them into their purses as they grabbed another napkin,” Ladd said. “These women looked innocent, but even as a small child at a Slovak wedding, I knew what they were up to as I watched them fill their purses.”
Ladd is now an avid baker who enjoys sharing recipes via the “Youngstown Cookie Table” Facebook group. He said he’s gained a new appreciation for the delicacies of his childhood after discovering how labor-intensive it is to make his favorite apricot kiffles.
Kiffles, which are similar to Polish kolachkes, involve cream-cheese dough stuffed with fruit jam.
Butter Maid Bakery in Boardman sells kolachkes to the wedding crowd, along with other local goodies, including buckeyes (peanut butter and fudge balls), tassies (mini caramel and pecan tarts) and sweet nut rolls.
Jeff Naumoff, owner of Butter Maid Bakery, inherited his wedding cookie recipes from his great-grandfather, owner of the former Steelton Bakery on Steel Street of Youngstown’s West Side.
“People call us and want cookies like mom or grandma used to make ’em,” Naumoff said. “It’s a lost art.”
The Mahoning Valley Historical Society pays tribute to that art each year at its Cocktails and Cookie Tables fundraiser.
Leeann Rich, MVHS external relations manager, believes the cookie table tradition rose to prominence during the steel boom of the early 20th century when a new wave of immigrants settled in the Valley. Rich noted that many people of Italian descent also prepare cookie tables for Christmas Eve.
A survey conducted by the MVHS found cookie tables to be most common in Ohio and Pennsylvania, though the tables also pop in Delaware, West Virginia and New Jersey.
Youngstown and Pittsburgh tussle over which city truly birthed the cookie table. Rich thinks it’s possible the custom developed simultaneously in both places.
People speculate that cookie tables gained popularity as a cost-savings measure during the Great Depression. Ladd, however, has a different theory.
“I think it was more of a celebration of different ethnicities coming together,” he said.