Rolling in Dough
BY REBECCA KEISTER / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF, October 2, 2008 

They are hard at work, have been for a while, and will be until the big event. "It's a lot of work," said Seagrave. "It's an intense couple of months. After a mad couple of months, I can't even look at a cookie for a couple of weeks."

It's no wonder.

Seagrave, 59, has been coordinating the bake sale and running up quite the reputation as the go-to gal for delicious, albeit pretty simple, cookies at the church for the last 10 years.

Before that, she was in Mahoney's shoes, serving as an assistant, as she calls it, to the previous cookie lady.

The path to volunteer baking was a relatively simple recipe for the North Attleboro wife and mother of three.

It was one part natural love for baking, and cooking, and an equal part desire to help out the church she's attended for the last 21 years.

"You sort of end up inheriting this job from other people," she said, trying to downplay her Cookie Lady rep. "There's been lots of people before me. I was helping out friends here, and there was a lot of camaraderie. It was fun."

Fun is a word she used again and again during her dough rolling and chilling session this past Monday night in the church basement. It seemed there wasn't a sentence where she didn't use it to describe the fair, the bake shop or the two months of prep work.

Still, not everyone would find this fun.

The bake shop takes in about $3,000 every year for the church for its cookies, which go for $5 a pound, pies, which are about $7 to $8.50, and breads. Seagrave, Mahoney (who is in her first year as Cookie Lady assistant), and a short list of other helpers are responsible for producing 85 pies, 524 dozen cookies in 35 varieties and 10 kinds of breads.

(That was the total from last year's sale.)

Doing so requires a lot of planning and a lot of hard labor.

Volunteer shifts are set up based on mixing (with the kitchen's industrial mixer), chilling and rolling, and then, a mad dash of baking in the last few days leading up to the sale.

"They are freshly baked for the fair," Seagrave said.

Cookie choices, she said, include "almost every imaginable variety" with chocolate chip, lemon sugar (Seagrave's favorite), snickerdoodles and lots of Christmas cookies, among them.

"This isn't fancy," Seagrave said. "It really isn't. These are cookies people are familiar with. But we use really good ingredients, and they're homemade so that makes them special. It's a good product."

The cookies are then lined up like a giant penny candy store for grownups, as Seagrave puts it, and customers select the products as though they were at the counter. She calls the experience, naturally, a "fun" thing.

Mahoney is learning the ropes and admits the project is a lot more work than she expected.

With a wheat allergy, she doesn't even get to take part in one of the biggest perks - test tasting.

"I can't eat the cookies," she said, still smiling and rolling out dough she's been cutting into Christmas trees and stars. They will be put in the freezer and eventually glazed and frosted.

"I eat gluten-free and I actually am a baker," she said. "My boys (sons, Aidan, 4, and Connor, 14 months), don't eat it either, so I have to get them cookies and cakes without it. I do bake a lot, trying to find alternatives."

Mahoney has only been at the church for a year after "finding religion on the Internet." (She took a religious preferences quiz on belief.net.)

Seagrave has been very happy for the help.

"Like every volunteer agency, we could use more volunteers," she said. "Cooking isn't everybody's favorite thing. But this is very fun."

REBECCA KEISTER can be reached at 508-236-0336 or at rkeister@thesunchronicle.com.

 Click here to view another nice article about our fair!