The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
New Year’s party includes cookie baking contest
WASHINGTON — An old-fashioned New Year's Tea Party and Cookie Contest will be held in the Wykeham Room of the Gunn Memorial Library, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on SAturday, Jan. 5. The snow date is Jan. 8, 4-6 p.m.
Visitors will gather under the historic 1914 gilded ceiling mural by H. Siddons Mowbray in a festively decorated Wykeham Room. The museum will have Washington photo albums out for guests to browse. Bring a tea cup and the library will provide tea and sandwiches. Registration is requested; email your name (s) to info@gunnhistoricalmuseum.org or call 860-868-7586.
One of the highlights of the Tea is the return of the Cookie Contest. The contest will give bakers an opportunity to have their culinary creations judged by professionals. Cookies should be homemade and baked by the contestant. Cookies will be judged in the following categories: most creative, best tasting, most festive, most original, baked by children under 16, and best overall.
Young bakers (ages 10-16) are encouraged to enter the cookie contest and compete in any of the categories. While the judges are picking a winner, youngsters can enjoy a hot cocoa bar, rounds of cookie bingo, a blind Oreo taste test, and a cookie decorating station. Bakers are encouraged to bring a friend to join in the fun.
Those interested in participating should pre-register by calling the library or signing up at the front desk. Entrants should submit 3 dozen cookies to the library at least half an hour before the event. Plates are to be submitted with an entry form which can be picked up at the library or accessed from our website. The judges are:
Ann Hodgman is the author of the Vegan Food for the Rest of Us, Beat This! and Beat That! and One Bite Won’t Kill You. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and Food & Wine. She has also written fifty children’s books.
Andrea Rush was a professional pastry person for over thirteen years and simultaneously was the owner of a wedding cake business. She has run various catering functions and for the past thirty years has been involved with Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House in New Milford making countless meals for unknown numbers with donated foodstuffs.
Susan Rush has been involved with food for forty-five years. She started with a catering company in Cambridge and went on to become the assistant banquet chef and Faneuil Hall in Boston. Following that, she ran the kitchen at a residential treatment program for children in Needham, MA. For the past twenty years, Susan has been involved with Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House cooking meals for large quantities of people on a weekly basis.
The Gunn Memorial Library is located at 5 Wykeham Road/Route 47 on the Green, in Washington.