The December issue of Rhode Island Monthly highlights holiday cookie swaps. We tell readers how to organize their own gatherings with friends and family, and provide seven different cookie recipes from local bakeries, pastry chefs and a Ukrainian church, and even a family recipe from Gail Ciampa, the food editor at the Providence Journal.
Once the issue hit mailboxes, we heard from a local group that has been organizing its own cookie swap for forty years at Marisa Vitali Gallo’s home in Cranston’s Pawtuxet Village.
“This invitation-only gathering is known for its gourmet standards, generations-deep participation, and its famously strict ‘no mediocre cookies’ rule,” wrote fellow baker Shawna Hassett, who participates in the cookie exchange. The swap features live holiday carolers, festive décor and more than twenty varieties of home-baked cookies, including recipes crafted by the original participants who began the tradition way back in the early-1980s.
Marisa always loved baking cookies with her mom and aunts growing up, so she started the more formal holiday cookie swap as a yearly tradition when her daughter was in kindergarten. “I acquired all these friends that all talked about baking, and so I said, let’s have a cookie swap,” Marisa says. “I remember my oldest daughter Jean-Nicole (Goudie) and her younger sister Alesandra (Pina) were waiting for Santa to show up at the party, and now they bake and participate with several friends. My mom [Jean Vitali], who is ninety-seven, alsi still participates every year.”
The Giordano family has also always been a part of it, including Marisa’s friend Mary Giordano, and her three daughters. Mary was one of the original bakers, and she continues to participate every year to keep the Christmas spirit alive…