New overall winner named at Senior Citizen Cookie Baking Contest

Jun 29, 2023

Jul. 25—GOSHEN — Ten-year contestant Karen Meade was named the overall winner of this year's Senior Citizen Cookie Baking Contest at the Elkhart County 4-H Fair.

The competition had three categories of cookies at the contest Tuesday morning: bar, drop and form. The competition took place in the Home and Family Arts Building. There were 13 entries this year with eight different contestants.

Meade placed first for drop cookies with her lemon meltaways and second in bars with her monster bars. She won a small cash prize and an engraved glass plate.

"It's just exciting and fun," she said. "I've placed before, but I've never won the overall cookie."

The judges this year were Ann Werner, Cheryl Huffman and Lauren Hickock. Huffman is the Intermediate Homemaker of the Year, and Hickok is the Young Homemaker of the Year.

When trying the cookies, the judges looked for ones that were moist, flavorful and had a good presentation. Meade said she made sure her cookies weren't on a paper plate or a tin plate, so they would look nicer.

Meade's favorite part of the fair is participating in the competition. She has been baking since she was 8 and enjoys finding new recipes. She said contestants can't resubmit recipes that have won before, but she has tweaked recipes that lost and entered them again. She plans to compete again next year.

Meade's lemon meltaway cookies were the judges' favorite.

Both Huffman and Hickok said they enjoyed getting to participate in the competition. They knew they would be "award-winning" cookies, and Hickok likes to try new things, so they were excited to help out.

"We'd like to see more people from the community enter because some of the contests we've been to, there was like one entry per each class ... so we were happy to see so much competition for this one," Huffman said.

While there was a good turnout, Hickok hopes there will be even more competitors at the 2024 Senior Citizen Cookie Baking Contest.