For its annual “Cookies for Cops” Holiday baking campaign, which provides cookies to every police officer in the state of Delaware as a show of support for law enforcement’s participation in sobriety check points, the Delaware chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) looked to Delcastle Technical High School in Wilmington, Del., for some hands-on help in the kitchen."MADD had not received quite the support that they had hoped, so they asked if we could be a part of this program," Delcastle culinary instructor Jim Berman wrote in an e-mail. "Given our resources, our students’ knowledge and willingness to provide service to the community, I offered our aid."
Culinary arts students in Delcastle's Cooks and Bakers club (pictured above) responded with an overnight baking effort—dubbed "Baking the Night Away"—that produced 6,000 cookies (that's 500 dozen) for the MADD-sponsored cookie drive. From roughly 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 19, 2008, to 10 a.m. the following morning, 41 students under Berman's supervision cooked 300 cookies at a time in the school's seven commercial ovens. The cookie ingredients? USFoods donated cookie batter as well as 240 pounds of flour, 150 pounds of margarine, 15 gallons of sugar, 600 eggs and 20 gallons of chocolate chips.
To aid Berman and his students, local businesses donated meals for the student bakers and cookie-transporting boxes, which were decorated by students at the nearby Wilbur Elementary School.
Delcastle Technical High School culinary student Javana Dickerson packages cookies for MADD's "Cookies for Cops" campaign.
