If you love neighborhood bakeries and food history, then the Great Chicago Cookie Box may be just the gift for you.
A food tour company has assembled three dozen cookies from nine bakeries across the city. They’re mostly made by family-owned businesses, plus a couple from not-for-profit kitchens.
Phyllis Petrilli, founder and operator of Chicago Foodways Tours, started the cookie box last year due to the pandemic.
“I wasn’t doing a lot of tours, and I thought this is a great way to give people a different flavor of Chicago, and hopefully give some business to some bakeries that might not have been seeing the foot traffic,” Petrilli said.
She likes to say her tour company takes people “deeper than deep dish,” with stories of the neighborhoods and the immigrants who settled them.
“With all of the different communities and bakeries in Chicago, I thought it would be fun to assemble a collection of cookies from around the city,” Petrilli said.
Not just traditional bakeries, but the Swedish American Museum too. Swedish Bakery, which closed in 2017, inspired the traditional pepparkakor gingerbread cookies made by volunteer bakers at the museum.
“I live close to Andersonville and Swedish Bakery was on my original food tour,” she said. “And I just felt like the box really was not complete without Swedish cookies.”
The fan favorite may be from Lucila’s Alfajores, a wholesale bakery in Ravenswood specializing in namesake dulce de leche sandwich cookies.
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“Lucila (Giagrande) is from Argentina,” Petrilli said. “And I used to be the general manager at Goddess and Grocer in Bucktown. One day Lucila wandered into our shop and asked, ‘Will you try my cookies?’ I was blown away by them, we started carrying them, and she and I’ve been friends ever since.”
Petrilli lovingly describes them as two shortbread cookies sandwiched together with a big dollop of dulce de leche.
“The most luscious caramel that Lucila hand-makes in her shop,” she added.
Choosing which cookies made the box was harder than you might think. Petrilli tried to pick the bakery first. She then considered some questions: Does it represent a different culture? Is it representative of the neighborhood the bakery is in?
“Some of the bakeries I knew, and some of them I just started going around and sampling,” she said. “I feel a little guilty, because by no means is this an exhaustive list of all the bakeries I would like to have. It’s just too much, too big of a production to put more than this together.”
One of her favorite cookies came from North Shore Kosher Bakery in West Rogers Park.
“I had no idea what Israeli rugelach were, and how they were different from Eastern European rugelach,” said Petrilli. “Since they’re kosher, they don’t use butter, because steam from butter can be a leavener. Theirs are leavened with yeast. So it’s almost like a little cinnamon crescent roll. They’re just so good and so perfect with coffee.”
A new cookie that made the box this year has a very personal connection: the Italian flag cookies from Palermo Bakery in Norridge.
“I’m Italian so there will always be Italian cookies in there,” Petrilli said, laughing. They’re the colors of Christmas and they taste really good. And I saw a similar cookie won the Tribune’s cookie contest.”
Fifteen-year-old Annamaria Arena, born on Christmas Day (as was Petrilli by some miraculous holiday coincidence), did indeed win second place with her Venetian Cookies — also known as rainbow cake or marzipan cookies — in the 2021 baiduhai Cookie Contest.
The box also includes lunchroom butter cookies from the Black-woman-owned Lady Di’s Bakery in the Ashburn neighborhood, Greek cookies from Hellas Pastry Shop in Lincoln Square, German cookies from Dinkel’s Bakery in Lakeview and signature potato chip cookies from Dorothy’s Sweet Shoppe, a not-for-profit bakery that provides experience for participants to practice customer service and social skills with the community.
The cookie box project is a true labor of love, with help from Petrilli’s personal and professional partner, Adolfo Moreno. They personally pick up from every bakery, before sealing each cookie in a cellophane bag.
“We do that so the flavors stay fresh, and one flavor doesn’t bleed into another,” Petrilli said. “We pack the cookies, labeled with ingredients and the different bakeries who made them. And then there’s a little piece that describes the bakery with a little bit of their history, and describes the cookie and its cultural significance or how it originated.”
You can order your Great Chicago Cookie Box by Dec. 15 for $76, which includes shipping by FedEx and a buy-one-get-one ticket for any Chicago Foodways Food Tour, at chicagofoodways.com.
“I hope in some small way to help keep these family businesses going a little bit longer before they disappear,” Petrilli said. “Because they’re the story of Chicago.”
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