Most people prepare for Christmas by writing lists: Cards to send, gifts to buy, decorations to put up, parties to attend.
Steve Bahmueller uses a spreadsheet to track another holiday chore: The cookies he bakes in his Hilltown home kitchen.
There’s Russian tea, Christmas pudding, sprinkle snowball, checkerboard, maraschino cherry almond, turtle-cashew, ginger spice, white chocolate macadamia nut, lemon sugar, oatmeal lace and 25 other kinds — all of them made from scratch.
As of the first week of December, Bahmueller had baked nearly 2,000 cookies, enough to nearly fill the two regular size freezer compartments and a mini fridge in the basement.
He wasn’t done yet. His goal was 40 different cookies, six more than last year. By the second week of December he hit 41.
“It’s kind of turned into an obsession,’ he said. “There are so many good cookies out there to make.”
Americans appear to agree with Bahmueller that Christmas isn’t Christmas without cookies.
Baking cookies is a holiday tradition for 81% of Americans and most families make one to four different kinds, according to the US branch of Italian baby product brand Chico.
There are no reliable numbers on how many cookies the average American eats during the holiday season, but it is estimated 330 million are left for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
The vast majority of those cookies (73%) are homemade, according to Chico.
Christmas cookies tradition continues in Hilltown home
The 62-year-old Bahmueller, a financial controller for a PBS affiliate, seemingly inherited this annual hobby from his father. Growing up he watched him whip up his favorite Sand Tarts and other traditional German cookies using family recipes.
His father continued making cookies after he retired and moved to Florida, Bahmueller said.
He was still baking as many as 800 cookies at a time for his church bake sales into his early 90s, earning him the nickname, “Cookie Man.”
After his father died earlier this year, the family passed out sugar and cranberry oatmeal cookies made using his recipes at the funeral service, Bahmueller said.
When Bahmueller was cleaning out his father’s home, he found so many cookie sheets he didn’t know what to do with them. He brought a few of them home.
As a child Bahmueller assisted his father with making the trays of Springerles, Spritz and Lebkuchens during the lead up to Christmas.
When he and his wife, Gloria, had their two children, Lisa and Randy, he wanted to revive that tradition.
“I wanted to continue the childhood memory of making my dad’s recipes,” he said. “And it slowly evolved from there. ”
The day after Thanksgiving, he would bake seven or eight batches of cookies. Lisa and Randy each invited a friend over to help Gloria with decorating them. It was a high honor to be chosen.
When the kids left for college, the family moved cookie baking to the Thanksgiving break. He also upped the batches to nine or 10, about 450 cookies, with one or two new recipes each year.
Then in 2021 Bahmueller was between jobs during the holiday season and looking to keep himself busy.
So he baked two batches of cookies every night, starting before Thanksgiving. That year he made 22 different kinds of cookies.
After that, there was no going back.
In the kitchen with Christmas Cookie King, Steve Bahmueller
The last two years, Bahmueller has moved the start of cookie baking season up even earlier.
This year the first four batches of almond sandies were finished the second week of October. Before Halloween a dozen batches of toasted coconut chocolate chip, snickerdoodle and German Spritz were tucked in the basement freezers.
Bahmueller estimated he bakes roughly an average of one batch of cookies a night, depending on the night. The first week of December, he spent three nights baking after work.
His accounting experience comes in handy this time of year.
Bahmueller keeps a spreadsheet with the cookie names, number of batches and dates they were baked. It includes notes about which recipes he liked, the ones he hated and what could be improved.
“I know when a batch didn’t come out right,” he said.
Like the white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies, another new addition this year. The white chips turned a little darker than Bahmueller wanted and stuck to the tray. Next year, he’ll line the tray with parchment paper.
So far, Bahmueller estimates he has gone through 60 sticks of butter, at least 20 pounds of flour and 30 pounds of sugar, and dozens of eggs. Stacks of empty cookie tins, large and small, and rolls of wax paper wait in the basement.
He searches websites daily for new recipes like the hot chocolate cookie (with mini marshmallows), Jell-O cookie, and chocolate chip shortbread.
Gloria Bahmueller is happy to let her husband handle the cookie baking, though she’ll contribute a batch or two of macaroons made the week before Christmas.
Her husband takes great pride in his cookies, she said.
“He’s very precise,” she said.
Which was clear on the first Saturday in December, when the smells of warm butter, vanilla and sugar wafted through the Bahmueller family kitchen.
The home baker carefully rolled the cold Sand Tart dough into thin sheets, cutting classic shapes: evergreens, trains, gift boxes, stockings, ornaments, bells, mittens and snowmen, and gently transferring each raw cookie onto a baking tray.
They were were then passed to Gloria and their daughter, Lisa Bahmueller-Scarborough, who brought the pale cream-colored dough to life. They carefully sprinkled designs using 21 different brightly colored sugars, jimmies, nonpareils, sugar pearls, cinnamon, even crushed candy canes.
At 28 years-old Bahmueller-Scarborough still cannot resist the chance to decorate cookies, even if it means driving two hours from central Pennsylvania, where she teaches fifth-grade, to participate.
“Get your sprinkle fingers ready,” she said. “Seriously, it was a way of life.”
Her grandpa may have been the “Cookie Man,” but dad, he is the Cookie King, she said.
“It’s hard to eat other people’s cookies now,” Bahmueller-Scarborough said.
So who gets the cookies? Neighbors, coworkers, Gloria’s friends who do a cookie exchange, holiday gathering invites for the family guarantee a cookie platter.
Lisa brings tins for the people at her school. Their son Randy, who has lost his taste for cookie-making, takes them to coworkers. One guy ate the whole tin in one night.
This year Bahmueller is even sending a tin to one of his father’s neighbors in Florida who told him that in all the years he knew his father he never shared his cookies.
Once the holidays are over, Bahmueller will break out his baking sheets only occasionally. Not that he needs to replenish his supplies.
“I am literally still eating Christmas cookies in June,” he said. “Of course, that is the benefit.”
