Monongahela celebrates its 250th birthday with a new record
Over 19,000 treats at world’s largest cookie table
It’s official. When it comes to the Pittsburgh tradition of wedding cookie tables, the tiny town of Monongahela rules supreme.
As part of its 250th birthday celebration Sunday, the Washington County town known for bringing a peaceful end to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 made history once again. The Monongahela Area Historical Society set a Guinness World Record for the largest wedding cookie table.
Guinness adjudicator Christina Conlon made it official at about 3 p. m., after tallying up just a portion of the hundreds of Statements of Authentication submitted and notarized by the event’s official cookie counters. The standing record going in was 18,000 cookies, based on a 2016 story in the Wall Street Journal about a wedding reception in Youngstown, Ohio. Ms. Conlon said with about a third of the statements counted, they had already hit 19,000 cookies.
“Our favorite records are those that bring people together not only to make history and achieve something officially amazing, but also to strengthen
and give back to the community as a whole,” she said, speaking from the tulledraped gazebo in Chess Park, where, just an hour before, Mayor Bob Kepics had officiated three weddings and three vow renewal ceremonies. “Today’s attempt was a perfect example of such an activity.”
Figuring out how to organize such a large event — the last in a weekend of special events celebrating the town’ ssemiqu in centennial — in such a small space proved quite the endeavor. Nonprofit organization Monongahela 250 spent the better part of a year finalizing details and lining up sponsors that included EQT, United Dairy, Washington County Tourism, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and The Hershey Company, which trotted out four new recipes for the event. Organizers also had to assemble the many bakers who donated their time and ingredients to make the record- setting a success.
Organizer Laura Magone estimated that the event drew some 400 amateur and professional cookie bakers, along with hundreds more who simply wanted to eat them once the counting was done. After Ms. Conlon’s announcement, anyone who paid $ 10 could take home as many cookies as they could stuff into a single box or bag, with the proceeds going to the Monongahela Area Historical Society. The remainder went to 412 Food Rescue and first responders.
A documentary filmmaker with a love for baking, Ms. Magone has been pondering such an event for at least a couple of years but didn’t get the ball rolling until early this year. She officially announced the event on July 6 on The Wedding Cookie Table Community on Facebook, which she created in 2015 and now counts more than 23,000 members.
Members of the Ringgold High School sports teams started setting up the 180 tables about 6: 30 a. m. Sunday. By 8 a. m., some bakers were already waiting to set up their displays even though the official drop- off wasn’t supposed to start until 10: 45. The lucky ones snagged spaces in the shade or on the corner.
Ms. Conlon deputized a crew of around 30 cookie counters to gather and verify the statements of authentication, while the city’s health officer, Carol Frye, headed up a team of volunteer health inspectors tasked with making sure all the cookies were being laid out according to ServSafe guidelines.
“Just remember, no touching of cookies with bare hands,” she called out as the bakers approached their assigned sites.
“And get rid of the dogs,” she added after catching sight of one on a leash in between the zigzag of tables.
Licensed bakers and attendees who brought purchased cookies got off relatively easy: Only home bakers had to fill out a form listing the ingredients of each and every variety of cookie on their table. For Christy Fullwood, of West Pittsburg, Lawrence County, whobrought 3,620 cookies, that entailed 20 different sheets.
She has been a full- blown baker for a decade, but for this event, “I wanted to make the most as an individual,” she said with a laugh. “Anything that’s weird is fun to me, and you don’t go to this kind of thing every week.”
Maila Jill Rible, a science educator at the Carnegie Science Center, was there for the fun, too — of teaching people that baking involves chemistry. She and her team of 13 helpers made 1,900 cookies of 37 varieties and also had a cooler of dry ice to drop into colored water to create clouds of steam. Their display also included a rendering of the periodic table of elements in cookie form by a summer SAP chemistry intern, Katie Kaczynski.
“It’s a chance to talk to folks about the biology and psychology of taste,” Ms. Rible said.
Tamsen Mongelli DiBlasio, who grew up in Pittsburgh and now lives in Baltimore, Md., came with her daughter, Talia Hammen, with 14 dozen anglettis — a type of Italian orange juice cookie that’s a family favorite. Ms. DiBlasio also created the delicate origami kusudama flower bouquets carried during the wedding ceremony.
Both are members of the Facebook cookie group who love baking, so it was a onceina- lifetime opportunity they couldn’t pass up, Ms. DiBlasio said, adding, “We’re so excited to be here with other bakers who are as passionate as we are.”
Bakers brought their cookies in pizza boxes, baskets, computer paper containers and a variety of plastic containers. Table design ranged from a simple display of trays to quite elaborate.
Karen Radu, of Nottingham, Washington County, decorated the space holding her 790 cookies with a 1965 wedding dress and old wedding photos. A breast cancer survivor, she was there to promote Dignity Robes of St. Louise, which makes robes for women undergoing radiation treatments for breast cancer.
Catherine Gruda, of Weirton, W. Va., and her fellow team members of the self- titled Flour Power Cookie League made 3,135 cookies in 18 varieties that included ladylocks, peach cookies, and strawberry sugar sticks.
Not everyone went all out: Rose Romboski brought a relatively modest 10 dozen buttery shortbread hearts she made “with love,” using lavender from her Cranberry garden. Not being part of a team or club, she and a friend, Anita Moulton, of Sewickley, had to jockey for an empty space amid all the displays. She ended up on table 48.
Tensions were high by the time Ms. Conlon took the stage at 3 p. m., and not just because the hot afternoon sun had melted many of the cookies made with chocolate. More than a few attendees had staked out a spot in front of their favorite cookie tables, so as soon as the adjudicator announced the tally they could pounce. Other than a few shoulder and elbow nudges, everyone behaved.
As the cookie event started to wind down at about 3: 30 p. m., Ms. Conlon figured she had at least three more hours of counting ahead of her in her hotel room — and maybe as many as six.