Cookie walk raises money for Habitat for Humanity

The smell of fresh-baked cookies wafted down the hallway and enticed visitors to the kitchen and fellowship room at Grace United Methodist Church, where dozens of volunteers were busy baking.

Bright and early Monday morning, the church members gathered to begin mixing dough and baking the cookies for their annual Cookie Walk sale.

The sale is from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the church and will include several varieties of cookies, holiday breads, divinity, fudge and peanut brittle, as well as some craft items.

Proceeds from the sale will be split among church projects and a donation to Habitat for Humanity.

Jean Sander cut out stars, stockings and other assorted holiday figures from the thin dough. Lillian Jones laid the cookies on a lined baking pan and prepared them for the oven.

The kitchen looked more like a factory as each person moved about performing their assigned task -- some carried cookies to cooling racks after they'd come out of the oven, others rolled the dough and others cut out the shapes.

In all, the volunteers will bake more than 700 dozen cookies during the week. About 150 of them will be decorated sugar cookies. Pecan tassies, Nieman Marcus cookies, Ranger cookies and chocolate chip cookies with and without oatmeal also will be for sale.

The church has hosted the Cookie Walk since 1994.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126