CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - If you dare to ask Spring Hill Pastry Shop owner Robin Williams for his sugar cookie recipe, he will laugh and say, “No.”
But not without explanation.
“These are the same recipes my family has used since 1948,” he said. “I can’t give them out.”
He means it. Sharing his nearly 70-year-old recipes would be something akin to a Christmas miracle.
His grandfather, Jimmy “Pappy” Williams, opened Spring Hill Pastry Shop with the same recipes Robin uses today. As the third generation in his family to run the bakery, Williams does not take his job lightly.
He is already passing the tradition to the next generation: his kids.
Williams’ son, Will, works closely with him each day, icing cakes and running the oven.
“Customers are used to getting the same thing,” he said. “We haven’t changed anything. Christmas is always the same every year.”
Williams is the first to arrive at the bakery each day to begin mixing the cookie dough and cake mixtures. His staff trickles in to begin filling the pastry carts and cases. In December, they make pastries that look like Christmas trees, yule logs - a decorated chocolate roll with a cream filling - petit fours, snowmen and “thousands and thousands” of cookies.
Decorators spend hours a day piping the cakes, dipping the petit fours, sprinkling on the snowman’s coconut coating and cutting dozens of batches of cookies a day.
For some bakers, this is their first time working a Christmas at the shop.
Zach King, Williams’ nephew, has worked for Spring Hill Pastry Shop since January and cuts the cookies each day.
“On sugar cookies alone, I spend between 10 to 15 hours a week,” King said, cutting a star out of a thin layer of dough.
King said he cuts more than 1,200 cookies a day.
“Usually, on a normal week, I’ll make half this amount on a Tuesday, and that’s all we’ll make for the week,” he said. “Since we’re making the cookie trays, I do double the amount, and I do it three or four times a week.”
The shop bustles with customers from open to close each day, carrying large boxes stamped with Spring Hill Pastry Shop’s phone number and address - not that their neighborhood regulars need it.
The shop hasn’t moved once in its existence, and despite how busy the bakery might get, it operates like a well-caffeinated machine.
If you ask Williams what he ate for breakfast, he will likely tell you “two cups of coffee and that’s it.”
But it would be easy to assume he also runs on sugar, or Spring Hill’s infamous Hot Dog doughnut pastry, which is still the bakery’s best-seller, even at this time of year.
“During this last week, we’re making a couple hundred dozen a day, and they’re all gone very early every day,” Williams said.
The bakery will close for two weeks after Christmas Eve. The season is so busy, he and his staff need that amount of time to recover, he said.
“We try to stay ahead,” Williams said. “We have extra help in here - four decorators working all the time.”
Within four days of its opening date, Jan. 9, some staff will return to “deep clean” the bakery and get ready to begin 2018 with a fresh start - except the recipes.
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, http://wvgazettemail.com.
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