Field Trip to the Cookie-Making Factory (Hand-Crafted Delish!)

One of my favorite Christmas memories as a girl is visiting the Moravian Love Feast at Old Salem for an historic candlelight Christmas.  The smells of ginger and cinnamon blended together are the best holiday scent!  That signature blend greets you as you walk through the door of this cookie factory...

Tucked into the corner of Forsyth County, Mrs. Hane's Cookie Factory bakes oven ten million hand-cut cookies each year!  They keep America (and occasionally abroad) well-stocked with this class yumminess all year long, and it takes the entire year to prepare for the Christmas season.

The factory bakes up about 100,000 pounds of cookies each year, with a hundred cookies in each of those pounds.  By and large, their most popular flavor is ginger, but they also make lemon, chocolate, sugar, and walnut.  Every single one of those cookies is cut by hand!

The factory began as a mother's wish to earn some Christmas money.  She began baking cookies to sell for the season, and it quickly blossomed into a booming business!  When she began, she was doing it all on a wood stove just like the one below.

Nowadays, the millions of cookies are sold year-round, with the vast majority going out at Christmas.  Factory workers begin preparing for the season in July, hand-packing cookie tins and preparing boxes for shipment.  Some of the employees have been with the company for decades, and there is quite the camaraderie in the building!

  

Naturally, we had to try every type of cookie they bake!  They were all super yummy, so we created a sampler pack - ok, a really large sampler crate - to bring home....MAYBE they'll last until the holidays?

Interested in touring the cookie factory?  Find out more here...

....and because we were fortunate enough to be in the area, we had a chance to visit with family after a long covid-separation.  A sweet day all around!