One Smart Cookie

MINOOKA - Sabrina Shafer loves baking cookies with her mother.

So much so, in fact, that she decided to start a business – a not-for-profit one.

The 10-year-old Minooka Intermediate School student spent her summer vacation baking 58 dozen cookies each week as a way to raise money for local charities.

“I love to bake with my mom,” she said. “I see people moving away and losing their jobs, and thought I would do it for charity.”

Her famous butter cookie recipe was a big hit at the Minooka Farmers Market each week, but Shafer didn’t want to give her customers just one type of cookie. Each week, Shafer introduced a new cookie to her faithful customers, as she experimented with tastes she thought would be good.

“My butter cookies were famous,” she said. “But my spice cookie some one said tasted like Christmas in her mouth, so that is it’s new name, The Christmas in your Mouth cookie.”

The cookie is made up of a gingerbread-like spice base with toffee chips.

While all the cookies are based off the original butter cookie recipe, Shafer had no limits to what she could do with them.

“I thought, ‘What would taste good together?,’ “ she said. “Like strawberry and chocolate.”

Each Thursday, Shafer and her mother would gather the ingredients and mix the dough, which had to sit overnight in the refrigerator before being baked on Friday.

When Saturday came, she loaded up the cookies and headed to downtown Minooka – rain or shine – to sell her cookies, six for a dollar.

“The first day in the rain we just went under our umbrella,” she said. “People were amazed a little girl was able to make and sell cookies.”

“When they found out I was doing it for charity, they thought it was very nice,” she added.

She said she had a little help from mom and dad, including some sales tips from dad.

“What I think sold the cookies was she is a fantastic sales person,” her father, Richard Shafer, said.

While dad helped with sales, little brother Justin (JJ as he likes to be called) had one of the most important jobs of all – taste tester.

Justin said his favorite is the original butter cookie.

Once Shafer’s cookie business started to take off, she had to decide where the money would go.

“I just knew I wanted to do it for charity,” she said.

After her mother, Lynn, made a few phone calls, they decided to split the proceeds from the summer between a food pantry at the United Methodist Church in Minooka and the Illinois Fire Safety Alliance-sponsored Burn Camp.

My brother likes when the firefighters come to see them at school, and we found out they had a burn camp.

On Wednesday night, Shafer and her family went to the Minooka fire station and delivered half of the summer’s profits, $300, to Bob Payne, a representative of the IFSA.

The other $300 she has set aside for the food pantry.

Shafer doesn’t plan to stop now.

She will be taking her hottest selling cookies to the Minooka Community High School Band Boosters Craft Show with a new charitable goal in mind.

“The money she raises at the craft fair will be used to provide turkey dinners to local families in need,” said her mother. “She will raise the money, go shopping herself, and deliver the dinners.”

They said they hope to get the names of several people in need in Minooka from the local churches.
Shafer said she may even deliver some of her cookies with the meals.