Come Dec. 6, Amanda Shulman, chef and creator of the now Michelin-starred Rittenhouse restaurant Her Place Supper Club, knows exactly what she’ll be doing: boxing up hundreds of cookies.
More than three dozen cookie varieties — snickerdoodles, chocolate chips, shortbread, thumbprints, meringues, macaroons, and many more, in 100-cookie batches — will be ferried to Center City that morning. They’ll be brought by bakers and pastry chefs from around the region, all of whom have enlisted to help Shulman pull off what has become an epic holiday fundraiser, Cookies 4 Coats, now in its fourth year.
Shulman and her crack team take over once the cookies have converged. They’ll crank for two hours, putting together a cookie box so big, it will fill the front seat of your car.
“It’s so many cookies,” Shulman said in a recent interview. “It is an irresponsible amount of cookies, and it’s awesome.”
If you’ve scored a box in previous years — the reservations for them were snapped up in a matter of hours last December — you know the treasure trove of sweets that lies within.
Last year’s 41-cookie box was full of recipes from pop-up bakers and pastry chefs, including several folks behind some of Philly’s most vaunted restaurants, bars, and bakeries: brown butter chocolate chip cookies from Provenance pastry chef Abby Dahan, white chocolate and cranberry oatmeal cookies from Friday Saturday Sunday’s Amanda Rafalski, hazelnut shortbread from Vetri’s Michal Shelkowitz, Italian anise wedding cookies from Laurel chef Nick Elmi, Krispie cornflake marshmallow cookies from New June’s Noelle Blizzard, and Irish shortbread from Meetinghouse chef Drew DiTomo, not to mention Shulman’s own sourdough chocolate chips.
All the proceeds from these coveted cookie boxes go to Sunday Love Project, a Kensington nonprofit that runs a free community grocery store in the Riverwards neighborhood. Last year’s sell-out bake sale generated a $15,000 donation that funded the purchase of hundreds of coats for local kids, as well as programming (music, art, cooking classes, etc.) for children and families, according to Sunday Love founder Margaux Murphy.
Shulman and Murphy first met in 2021, while Murphy was still running Sunday Love out of the Church of the Holy Trinity at 19th and Walnut, serving 2,000 meals a week to anyone in need. Shulman and the Her Place crew — then in their first year of business — got involved, cooking lunches for kids going to summer camp and dropping off meals to the church.
Her Place was the stage for various pop-up bake sales and charity events in those pandemic-era years. In 2022, the idea came to Shulman for an extra-special one: “Everybody loves a holiday cookie box.” Why not assemble a citywide assortment and donate 100% of the proceeds to Sunday Love?
She put out an open call to bakers to pitch in and got tremendous response. She shared an online spreadsheet for the participants to see who planned to bake what, so that there wouldn’t be too many repeats. To add to the box’s value, they included a recipe book so that buyers could recreate their favorites at home.
Shulman estimates 32 bakers contributed to the first Cookies 4 Coats box, raising thousands of dollars. Ever the one to see things through, Shulman didn’t leave much work for Murphy to do after collecting the cash.
“The first year, I [sold the boxes] a little earlier and I bought [the coats] all myself on Black Friday and had them all shipped to my house, so I had hundreds of coats in my apartment,” Shulman laughs, recalling the charity-induced splurge. “I needed to get different designs. I had to be sure there was something for everybody, so I went a little crazy. I had never racked up a credit card like that, and it was so exhilarating.”
Things are different these days, and Shulman says that’s for the best. “Now we just write checks, because they need other things besides coats — and [Murphy] gets to pick out what she needs as opposed to me just going on a shopping spree.”
Reservations for this year’s cookie box went live earlier this month and sold out in a matter of days. Shulman lowered the total number of boxes sold from 120 to 100, but the fundraiser is set to generate even more this year, because the price — $135 per box — increased to cover the cost of improved packaging: Each cookie will be individually wrapped this year, so buyers know which cookie is which rather than guessing based on flavor profiles and recipe cards (a fun game in itself).
Thirty-three bakers and chefs are signed up to contribute thus far, including Scampi’s Liz Grothe (cappuccino Rice Krispies treat), New June’s Blizzard (salted double chocolate chip shortbread), Amy’s Pastelillos’ Amaryllis Rivera-Nassar (besitos de coco), and Lost Bread’s Dallas King (honey butter corn cookies). (For those who don’t have a Cookies 4 Coats reservation, we offer eight of Shulman’s favorite recipes from last year’s box as a consolation.)
Murphy is perpetually floored by the size of the donation, and by Shulman’s seemingly bottomless reservoir of generosity. Murphy’s had strangers give thousands of dollars to Sunday Love, only to discover it was because Shulman recommended the nonprofit to a customer or acquaintance. Shulman recently collaborated with the Philly-area meal-delivery service Home Appetit, sending a portion of the sales to Sunday Love; it resulted in an $8,000 donation.
“I always tell her, she waves a magic wand and she’s just like, ‘Here’s $10,000, feed all the children,’” Murphy said. She remembers a very pregnant Shulman coming to last year’s annual coat giveaway (which will take place this year on Dec. 13 at 3206 Kensington Ave.). “She was in my store because she wanted to see the kids getting coats — I was like, ‘I swear to God, if you have this baby right here on my floor’ — that’s how hard she was working just to make sure that we had everything.”
Shulman remembers that day a little differently, singling out a moment where she watched a little girl pick out a coat — “this brand-new, shiny pink coat that she got to pick out,” she said. “It’s full circle when you get to do every single part of the process, from the physical picking of the cookies to packing them to printing the things. I’m very grateful to everybody who helps out, and especially to my own team, because it’s a lot of work to make it this seamless.”
That’s what Shulman comes away with when reflecting on what goes into this crumb-flecked effort: gratitude.
“If I can say thanks to my team … and to the community, that would be awesome. Thank you to all the bakers and restaurant people who give so much in the busiest time,” she said. “These bakers take time to not only make [the cookies], but then get it to us. It sounds like an easy lift — it’s not, especially if you’re going to work that day. I don’t take it for granted at all.”