Annual cookie swap brings Elgin women together for food, fellowship

Cookie swaps abound this time of year, but few have the fervor and history of Gena Carter's annual swap in Elgin.

For the past 15 years, Carter has organized a cookie swap in her home just outside the small town about 20 miles northeast of Austin that has grown to include more than 40 guests and almost 4,000 cookies.

Peppermint chocolate chip cookies, potato chip cookies, ranger cookies, pumpkin spice and chocolate chip cookies, many of which were based on recipes that the women baked with their mothers and grandmothers. Lemon bars, cheesecake squares, no-bake cookies made with instant oatmeal and even a box of butterscotch chip cookies from Tiff's Treats, the Austin-based cookie delivery company.

"I've never had rules," Carter said at last year's party. "Only to have fun. Even if you burn your cookies, come anyway."

So how important is this cookie party? Last year's party fell on Glenda Ross's ninth anniversary with her husband. She was at the cookie swap with her daughter Kim. "I'll bring him cookies," she said.

Amid the busyness of the season, making to-do lists at night and at work, these women gather to decompress over cookies and have dinner. (Even Carter seems at ease, a feat few can pull off with a house packed with people walking around with bright red cranberry punch.)

Most of them have known each other for decades, but for the past 15 years, they've marked the passing of another year by passing platefuls of carefully crafted sweets. Everyone brings six dozen cookies and goes home with more cookies than they could eat in a month. "It's my favorite thing of the Christmas season," says Kay Wing, one of Carter's closest friends. As she and Carter talk about all the swaps of years past, you can see all the heartbreak and triumph of those years flash between them. "We've been through a lot. She's my prayer warrior," Wing says.

The first few years, they were squeezed in Carter's little tiny kitchen, but they made it work. When Carter and her family moved to a larger house out in the country, the guest list expanded and so did the number of cookies, and last year's party was the biggest so far.

Carter insists that before the swapping begins, each guest takes a turn talking about what she brought and why. Every year, Carter explains why she makes the same cookies — brown sugar cookies and snickerdoodles. "I'm so full of gratitude that you all have come, and I'm so thankful for all of you. We've been together through a lot of things. Twenty years ago, I moved here from Taylor and didn't know anybody and I thought my life was over," she told the group of women, many of whom had heard the story before but listened intently as if they were hearing it for the first time. "These cookies are a reminder that my life is not over. I couldn't imagine not living in Elgin."

Carter knows that the stories the women share are far more important than the cookies themselves.

Nancy Miller brought White Russian cookies, which she recalled making when she had only cream cheese, sugar and flour during World War II. "Making them again this year, I thought about all the years and all the contributions (the soldiers who were fighting during that time) made. They are hell to make, but worth it."

Genese Bell made coconut Krispies, the recipe for which she found in a cookbook collection that was among the trove of things her mother brought when she moved in with Bell's family that year.

Peggy Garza told the women about making her snickerdoodles while chasing her then 9-month-old granddaughter. They are the same cookies she sends her son in Iraq. "I have to send snickerdoodles because I can't send chocolate chips in the mail."

Marquita Ferguson noted that there weren't any misshaped or burnt cookies in her batch because her husband helped her get ready for the party by eating all the ugly ones.

At a party like this, semi-homemade is just as good as from scratch. Joann Harkins was up until 11:30 the night before making cake mix cookies, which she mixed by hand. "And I have the blister on my thumb and a burn on my wrist to show for it," she said, showing off her wounds.