GREENWOOD — One hundred ninety-six pinwheels. 150 spritz.
Ninety Russian tea cakes. 127 peanut butter kisses. Another 133 spritz.
As the Christmas season progresses, Amy Wight Chapman’s tally of cookies baked grows — and grows — and grows.
Most years, she said, the total approaches 2,000, to be distributed to family, friends and others.
Many bakers would tire just thinking about that number.
But Chapman of Greenwood has been at it for almost 40 years.
“It’s an obsession,” she jokes. “I blame my mother.”
There does seem to be a genetic tendency to bake, stretching from at least Chapman’s grandmother on down to Chapman’s own daughter.
In the 1950s, Chapman’s late mother, Ruth Wight, “used to turn on the oven every morning as she was sending four kids out the door to school, then decide whether to make a pie, a cake or a batch of cookies,” Chapman said.
She learned from her mother, and has taken up the holiday baking cause in the decades since. She makes many of the same varieties her mother did.
Chapman never counted cookies until the year 2000 approached and she began wondering if she could mark that milestone with an equal number of cookies. She discovered that without upping her production rate much, she was able to do it.
She has kept a yearly tally ever since, starting in late November or early December and continuing right up to a few days before Christmas.
“I probably make up and give away between 40 and 50 bags of cookies every year, to coworkers, friends, family, etc., and I take tins of them to various events,” Chapman said. “I have a half-dozen kinds I have to make every year, and I sometimes experiment with other kinds.”
Among the regular kinds, “Spritz give the most yield for the time expended, because there’s no need to chill the dough, the press does all the shaping, and the decorating is done before they go in the oven — usually just sprinkles or cinnamon candies,” she said. “And they’re small.”
A favorite for her — and others — are gingerbread men (and teddy bears).
“They are the most time-consuming, because the dough has to be chilled, rolled out, cut, baked and decorated with icing. Russian tea cakes are a favorite, but also a multistep process that involves shaping them by hand and rolling them in confectioners sugar — twice — after baking.
“And pinwheels are a nightmare, with lots of chilling, rolling, shaping, and slicing,” she said. “I tend to tear the dough — and also tear out my hair — over those, but they are one of several, like the Russian tea cakes and gingerbread men, that I make because my mom always made them.”
The cookies that don’t come out just right are directed to Chapman’s husband, Tony, and their son, Will, who are glad to help out.
When her children were young, Chapman would decorate individual gingerbread men to resemble their classmates.
“I’d send upwards of 100 cookies off to school,” she remembered.
Her daughter, Cait, now carries on the tradition as well, baking dozens for her friends and co-workers.
Chapman was reminded of the significance of the “sweet” family tradition several years ago, when she dropped in to see an old friend of her mother’s.
“The last time I visited my mom’s lifelong best friend, who was nearing 90 and in an assisted living facility, I brought her a plate of Christmas cookies, and she got teary-eyed and said, ‘These are all the kinds your mother used to make!’ Chapman said.
“Which is really why I do it,” she said.
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