Bolton teens bake cookies to raise money for Helping Hearts

Bolton teens bake cookies to raise money for Helping Hearts

WICKED LOCAL BOLTON

By Holly Camero

01.28.11

Three local teens have cooked up a plan to turn dough into cash.

High school seniors Jessica Campbell, Sara Quirk and Kristen Holbrook are baking and selling cookies to raise money for two local causes that are dear to their hearts. They call the project Helping Hearts.

Money raised from Helping Hearts will benefit the Stephens family of Bolton and the Fisher House in Boston. Jessica said she wants people to know that the money will be going to two worthy causes. Sarah Ix Stephens, mother of Florence Sawyer School sixth-grader Cameron Stephens and wife of Mark Stephens, recently lost a four-year battle with cancer. A fund has been set up in her name to help the family pay for costs incurred during her illness.

The Fisher House Boston in Roxbury, located near the VA Hospital in West Roxbury, offers 21 suites where families of military patients can live for free while their loved ones are undergoing treatment.

This is the second year Jessica and Sara have sold homemade cookies. Last year, they organized Hearts for Haiti and proceeds from their efforts benefited earthquake victims in that country.

Jessica said, “Last year was very successful and since the recent death in the Stephens family and my mom read about Fisher House — so we decided to change it to Helping Hearts.”

“It’s for a good cause and we knew the family,” said Sara.

Sara also has a personal stake in the effort as one of her mother’s cousins fought in Iraq and lost one of his legs during the war.

“We know firsthand how much [Fisher House] will benefit the families,” she said.

This year the girls have nearly doubled their cookie production and have made 700 cookies. They asked friends to donate batches of homemade dough and recruited Kristen to help bake and decorate the cookies.

On Saturday, Jan. 22, the girls, with help from mothers Margaret Campbell and Kathy Quirk, took over the kitchen at A Moveable Feast in Hudson, a catering business owned by the Stephens family and formerly run by Sarah Stephens. For almost three hours, the girls busily rolled out dough and cut out the heart-shaped cookies. Pans of cookies were stacked on nearby racks and the kitchen was redolent with the aroma of freshly baked butter cookies.

And while most of the cookie dough — 11 batches in all — was transformed into cookies, the girls just could not resist having a sample or two.

“I’ve been eating the dough so I know the cookies will be good,” laughed Sara.

The cookies will be kept frozen, for now, and icing will be added closer to delivery. They will be decorated with six different designs, so anyone ordering a half-dozen will receive one of each design. Cookies will be individually wrapped and packaged for gift giving.

The three girls will be heading off to college in the fall, but say they will bake cookies again next year.

“I was thinking we could do it during Christmas break next year — maybe with a Christmas theme,” said Jessica. “We can get younger kids to do it and pass on the legacy.”