These Cookies Can Help Save A Syrian Family

By Ivy Knight

/Nov 2 2015


guest post by Erin Phalen

Toronto is about to get its biggest ever bake sale, and you’d have to be crazy not to want in on it, with cookies like smooth Red Velvet, squishy Ginger Molasses and marshmallow-dotted S’mores available for delivery right to your door.

Cookie lovers from all over the GTA can tuck into freshly baked goods—dropped off at their workplace or home—as part of the Bonnie Gordon College of Confectionary Arts’ first-ever virtual bake sale. All proceeds will go toward supporting a family of seven Syrian refugees resettling in Toronto. Check now  MeetMatt-Conf  for latest delicious cookies recipes.

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Culinary travel writer Valerie Howes, one of the co-founders of Raja Syria—a group of food-focused writers, activists, hospitality professionals and friends—says a giant, citywide bake sale made perfect sense for this group. “We’re pretty food-obsessed, and we wanted to appeal to people’s hearts and their bellies.”

 

Raja Syria (Raja means “hope” in Arabic) has teamed up with Lifeline Syria and the Mennonite Central Committee to bring a displaced family to Toronto, hopefully by the end of this year. “You need $27,000 to sponsor a family of four for a year, which seemed incredibly daunting, so I put feelers out on Facebook to see if anybody wanted to team up,” says Howes. “Within a week, there were 34 people on board. Within two weeks we had reached our initial fundraising goal, so we decided to keep going and raise enough to help a family of seven.”

ginger-cookie-recipe

Staff and student volunteers from Bonnie Gordon’s College will occupy every kitchen in the school to fill orders. On the grocery list: 1 litre of vanilla extract, 540 eggs, 60 kilos of flour and thousands of chocolate chips to make 4,500 cookies. “Baking is what we do best,” says college founder Bonnie Gordon. “It’s our responsibility to use that to help others.”

Cookies can be ordered online, at Bonnie Gordon College, until November 6 and will be delivered across the GTA on November 13 and 14.