B.C. baker, museum team up for fundraiser selling cookies made from early 20th-century recipes

They are cookies for a cause. And they aren't just old-fashioned, they're historic.

These sweet treats come from the kitchen of Rustica Woodfired Bakery in Smithers, B.C., about 1,150 kilometres north of Vancouver. They're crafted by Rustica owner and baker Meg Roberts, who, for four years now, has been teaming up with locally-run Bulkley Valley Museum on a Christmas fundraising project called Cookies from the Archives.

Roberts makes cookies from recipe books in the museum. The cookies are then boxed up and sold. For the first three years, proceeds have gone to the Bulkley Valley Museum.

This year, however, Roberts and Bulkley Valley Museum curator Kira Westby have decided to direct the dollars to two smaller museums in the region — Telkwa Museum and Widzin Kwah Diyik Be Yikh (Widzin Kwah Canyon House Museum) in Witset.

Boxes of cookies are shown inside Bulkley Valley Museum in Smithers, B.C. Baker Meg Roberts makes the cookies from recipe books housed in the museum, and they are sold in a fundraising project called Cookies from the Archives. (Submitted by Kira Westby)

Roberts says the cookie recipes come from Five Roses Flour Cookbook, published in 1915, and from a local cookbook that came out in the 1950s.

Cookies for sale this year are shortbread, ginger and chocolate, or a mix of all three.

Simple, but delicious

Roberts says working from old cookbooks has been interesting.

"A lot of [the recipes] are [from] around wartime so you don't have all the ingredients," she told Margaret Gallagher, host of CBC's North by Northwest. "You either have butter or eggs or sugar or honey … Nowadays we would put everything in, but they're pretty simple."

Roberts says simple can also mean less expensive, especially for those cookies that don't call for butter, which currently ranges in price from about $5.50 to almost $8 per 454 grams.

A page from Five Roses Flour Cookbook, published in 1915 and housed at Bulkley Valley Museum in Smithers, B.C., is shown. (Submitted by Meg Roberts)

Of all the "archive cookies" Roberts has pulled out of her oven, she says she has a couple of favourites. One is a sandwich-style cookie called a jam jam — a cookie made from "very simple dough," with jam in the middle and a star design on the top.

"And then probably my most favourite is this amazing chocolate wafer that's this very fine, thin wafer cookie. And you can make it in chocolate or vanilla, and we do a chocolate one. Yeah, beautiful."

Classic cookie idea has 'resonated with folks' 

Roberts says she likes to raise funds for her community through the bakery. She's originally from Australia and says helping Bulkley Valley Museum appealed to her for a number of reasons.

"It's a lovely place to visit, and I think history is what makes our future," she said. "We learn from it, and it's lovely to delve into stories. Not being originally from here, I've found it has helped me understand the region a lot better. So I think it's a really good thing to support."

Westby says the Cookies from the Archives campaign "was all Meg's idea" and raised between $500 and $900 for Bulkley Valley Museum in each of its first three years.

"I think it has kind of resonated with folks, to know that these are tried and tested old-fashioned recipes," Westby said. "I think she's been following them pretty closely. I think maybe they've needed a smidge of updating here and there."

Westby says Bulkley Valley Museum has had "a very positive year financially," so she and Roberts decided to support the museums in Telkwa and Witset this time around.

"They're both very small, community-led institutions, so the kind of place that even an extra $100 or $200 makes a big difference," Westby said. "I'd love to be able to get $500 for each of them because that's a really nice little boost for them around the holidays."

Bulkley Valley Museum is taking orders for cookies and will have them available for pickup on Dec. 18.