Gingerbread, hot cocoa & more: Centre County baker shares love of Christmas cookies with community

During the holiday season, Christina Hallett’s life is all cookies, all the time. Owner of Crumbkowski, a made-to-order bakery service that offers sweet treats at a range of pop-up events and at Vibe Coffee Co. in downtown State College, Hallett has always loved baking and Christmas cookies are a family affair.

“Christmas cookies have always been a big deal in my family,” she said. “Everyone always had the peanut butter blossoms and the chocolate chip and the sugar cookies and the gingerbread, but we had chocolate caramel delights and maple yule logs — all these types (of cookies) that you didn’t see anywhere else. I really wanted to share that with everyone.”

This season, Crumbkowski offered a range of holiday cookie bundles, with customers receiving 36 cookies in a cookie “mix,” with six different flavors represented in each.

“I have my Classic Mix that has the sugar cookie, the gingerbread, the chocolate chip, the peanut butter blossom,” Hallett said. “But then I have the Crumbkowski mix, which is more of what my family makes. It’s a little bit different, but to me is traditional for Christmas, even if it’s not to anyone else. Then I have the Christina’s Mix, which are the (cookies) that are a little bit newer to me. Maybe they weren’t my traditional Christmas cookies growing up, but they’re flavors that make sense this time of year.”

Her crowd favorites cookies, though? Hallett points to her peanut butter blossoms, with the close runner-up being the orange cranberry cookie. Her personal favorites are the maple yule logs and the cinnamon roll cookies.

“The (maple yule log) is a maple cookie with a maple icing. It’s one of the more simple cookies that I make for Christmas, but it just has that really nice maple flavor. It’s a nice, soft cookie. Then, the cinnamon roll is a vanilla cookie with a cinnamon swirl in it, like the same type of filling you’d get in a cinnamon roll. Then, I dip it in a vanilla glaze. It’s a super-soft cookie and it just makes you think you’re eating a cinnamon roll,” Hallett said.

Still, there are some cookies on her menu that she says deserve a little extra love. Her hot cocoa cookie, for example, doesn’t receive as much customer attention, but, she says, for those who do try it, they come back with rave reviews. The cookie is made with hot chocolate mix, miniature marshmallows and chocolate chips.

“It looks kind of boring, because the marshmallows kind of melt a little bit, but when you bite into it, you say, ‘Wow! I haven’t had anything quite like that,’” she said.

Hallett is also particularly proud of her butter brickle drizzle cookies, based on a family recipe that she says took a little extra finesse and some hard work to get the results just right. A brand-new addition to the Crumbkowski menu, the cookie is a butter cookie with oatmeal, toffee chips and a chocolate drizzle.

In addition to the Christmas cookie mixed batches, Hallett likewise offers gingerbread men and decorated sugar cookies, also in batches of three dozen (though orders of just a dozen cookies are available as well). Hallett announced on social media late Tuesday that she’s no longer accepting orders for Christmas cookies and is “fully booked and then some.”

If you missed putting in your Crumbkowski cookie order this year, Hallett offers some advice for home bakers making their own Christmas cookies.

“The big thing is to make sure that all your ingredients are at room temperature. Make sure your butter is soft. You can pull it out early. You can put it in the microwave for a little bit. It’s the same with your eggs. You want them to be room temperature,” she said. “Then, I feel like a lot of people either over-mix their dough or over-bake their cookies. I like to pull mine out a little early. That’s what keeps them really nice and soft.”

As she looks ahead to the new year, Hallett anticipates offering seasonal Valentine and Easter cookies, and is considering offering kits for customers to decorate their own cookies at home. For now, though, she’s concentrated on managing her multitude of Christmas cookie orders while juggling her two children and attending events to sell her cookies and other treats, such as the recent Bellefonte Under the Lights.

Hallett anticipates she’ll make more than 2,000 cookies this season. So, with all those Christmas cookies around, does she ever get tired of them? “I have a very, very sweet tooth,” she said with a laugh. “And when I’m not immersed in baking all the time, I will eat them — but when I’m baking all day, every day, they’re not as tempting.”

Learn more about Crumbkowski at www.crumbkowski.com and www.facebook.com/crumbkowski.

This story was originally published December 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.