Yes, you can call her “The Cookie Lady.”
“Everybody does,” Dr. Deb Bash said with a giggle.
“We go crazy at Christmas – what can I say.”
You can call this an annual baking Bash.
Bash is a retired Scottsdale plastic surgeon who leads “operation holiday cookies,” an annual event at her home in Cave Creek along the North Scottsdale border.
She and her family make not a few dozen – but a few hundred dozen.
“We started it when I moved out here,” she said. “I grew up in Illinois, but then my parents moved to Scottsdale in 1994 and my sister moved here a few years later.”
Deb was living in Albuquerque and phoned Scottsdale. “Mom,” she said, “if I can bake with you all the time, I’ll move back to Phoenix.”
Deal, her mother said.
The first Christmas bakeoff in 2000 “was just the three of us,” Bash said.
Family members heard about this and started flying in from Pennsylvania and other parts of the country.
“This year there’ll be maybe 15 of us,” Bash said.
The ages of the bakers and helpers range from Bash’s father Ken, 90 years old, and 89-year-old mom Joyce to Henry Dervonis, Deb’s 4 year-old great nephew.
She expected this year’s four-day operation to bake “about 4,000 cookies.
“The biggest we’ve done was 2019 – 453 dozen. We usually do close to 400 dozen every year.
“And we give them all away.”
Bash’s parents, who live at a retirement center, take a few dozen to give to friends. Some family members fill suitcases and fly the baked loot home.
Family members take cookies to fire stations, retirement homes, food banks and other community spots.
Baking supplies?
“I work on it all year long,” Bash said.
“I have 60-70 pounds of butter in my freezer. A hundred pounds of flour. A hundred pounds of sugar.
“It looks like Costco in my house.”