ELY- For the last five years, Mollie Johnson has baked Christmas cookies and given them away free to all comers at the store where she works, just because it’s a nice thing to do. This year, she baked 1,100 cookies. “It took me about two weeks to bake them all,” Johnson said.
Johnson set up her cookie spread on Thursday, Dec. 21, on a large table at KJ’s True Value Hardware. She made over 20 varieties including thick slices of Swedish almond cake, Russian tea cakes, and traditional Christmas sugar cookies.
This is the first year Johnson has set up her cookies at the KJ’s True Value location. She has worked for Jay and Jacki Poshak for the last six and a half years, first at their J&L Hardware location on Chapman. When the Poshaks moved the hardware store to the new location on 3rd Ave, and rebranded the store as KJ’s True Value, Johnson moved with them. The new store has a lot more room, which enabled Johnson to set up on a table twice as big as previous years.
This year, Johnson set up a donation jar at her cookie table. She collected $229 in cash donations, which she split three ways, with $77 for the Contented Critters animal shelter, $77 for the Ely Area Food Shelf, and $75 to help pay for the supplies to make cookies for Christmas 2024.