Anyone who knows Ed Lilley knows where to find him this time of year -- in his kitchen baking cookies.

During the day, Lilley is the welcome center manager for the Howard County Office of Tourism and president of the Ellicott City Restoration Foundation.

But during the holidays, he becomes something else -- a baking machine.

Since November, whenever he is not working Lilley has been in his Catonsville kitchen, surrounded by mixing bowls and cookie cutters, continuing a tradition of being his family’s cookie baker.

“I am making 150 dozen this year,” he said, adding that was 30 dozen more than he baked last year. “That doesn’t count the ones I eat.”

Lilley uses a four-generations'-old sugar cookie recipe that dates back to his family’s roots in Germany. He hands the cookies out in tins to family, friends, colleagues and employees throughout the Howard County government.

“The recipe came from my great-great-great-great grandmother,” he said. “I have looked around a lot and cannot find a similar recipe to it.”

Lilley does not decorate his cookies.

“No icing, no sprinkles, no nothing,” he said. “It’s enough work making the 1,800 or so.”

Oh, and no mixer either. The dough is mixed by hand. With a fork.

“People have tried to make them using a mixer and the texture and taste is entirely different,” he said.

All too true, said Karen Knight, special assistant to County Council member Greg Fox, who is a big fan of Lilley’s treats.

“I love his cookies,” she said. “It would not be Christmas without them. They are the thinnest cookies that anyone could possibly make.”

Bestowed with the recipe from Lilley for the first time last year, Knight attempted to bake the cookies herself.

The results, she said, were less than stellar.

“I said ‘Ed, they didn’t turn out like yours.’ ”

Lilley asked her if she used a mixer, which Knight confessed she had.

“He told me, ‘You are supposed to do them by hand,’ ” Knight said. “I was thinking, ‘When was the last time I creamed butter and sugar by hand?’ ”

Knight is not the only one who looks forward to the treats. Lilley gives cookies to County Executive Kenneth Ulman and to employees throughout departments of county government.

“People at Rec and Parks get them, everyone at Tourism gets them,” she said. “He spreads them out to many departments, and they expect them.”

Two-day process

Making the cookies is a two-day process for Lilley, who mixes up the dough on one day and then bakes the next, after the dough has chilled overnight in the refrigerator. Then the cut-out process begins.

Hearts, a man in the moon, stars of all sizes, reindeer, doves, penguins, Christmas trees — all shaped using Lilley’s collection of about a hundred cookie cutters, some of which he acquired on a trip to Germany a decade ago.

He is careful to exert the correct pressure when he cuts. Two cookie sheets at a time go into the oven. He rotates the sheets, not only from rack to rack, but from front to back.

“That is the way my mother made them,” he said. “Nothing gets frozen and they all go into metal cookie tins for giving away.”

He has been baking holiday cookies for about 15 years, he said, but only in the last three or four years has it been on such a large scale.

Lilley’s sister, Ann Bindi, of Catonsville, said she is happy to leave the sugar cookie baking to her brother.

“It’s just too much work for me,” she said. “I bake a lot of other things and we have a deal — he bakes the sugar cookies.”

Bindi’s one-word description of the cookies? Addictive.

“Everybody that tastes them loves them,” she said. “Everybody he gives a sample to, they just want more and more. You eat one and you can’t stop. If people knew how much butter and sugar is in there, maybe.”

Lilley says he gets many offers from family or friends wanting to help him in the kitchen.

“No help please,” he says. “In my mind, it is a process that I go through and I don’t think having someone else help would add to it. They would be more in the way than they would be of help.
 
“It’s a mental thing. I like the rhythm of the whole process.

“To me, it’s a Christmas tradition,” he said.

“I think, as you get older, you think of family traditions and I looked around one year and thought, ‘Most of the old ones in my family don’t bake anymore.’ Then I thought, ‘I am getting to be an old one myself.’

“I decided I would try it, and I really enjoy it. It’s an easy way to make a nice gift for someone.”

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user comments (1)

user cbindi says...

The cookies have even become popular out here in Colorado, as my uncle always sends us a tin or two. The only problem is that now I have to share them!!!

Posted 7:08 PM, 12.17.09 | Permalink