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MCKENZIE LANGE/The Daily Sentinel
Pam Harsh offers her hula girl gingerbread cookies at Kulina Lani Organic Sourdough Bakery, which recently opened in Grand Junction.
MCKENZIE LANGE/The Daily Sentinel
Jan Wilke, co-owner of Home Style Bakery, shows off a couple loaves of German stollen. The bread was something her parents always had for Christmas breakfast when she was growing up.
Christopher Tomlinson/The Daily Sentinel
Callie Ash with The Baker’s Boutique decorates sugar cookies with royal icing at her bakery at 726 24 Road.
MCKENZIE LANGE
Jan Wilke, owner of Home Style Bakery, places German stollen into a display case at the bakery

MCKENZIE LANGE/The Daily Sentinel
Pam Harsh offers her hula girl gingerbread cookies at Kulina Lani Organic Sourdough Bakery, which recently opened in Grand Junction.
MCKENZIE LANGE/The Daily Sentinel
Jan Wilke, co-owner of Home Style Bakery, shows off a couple loaves of German stollen. The bread was something her parents always had for Christmas breakfast when she was growing up.
Christopher Tomlinson/The Daily Sentinel
Callie Ash with The Baker’s Boutique decorates sugar cookies with royal icing at her bakery at 726 24 Road.
MCKENZIE LANGE
Jan Wilke, owner of Home Style Bakery, places German stollen into a display case at the bakery
When it comes to holiday treats, bakers play favorites.
There are certain cookies, cakes or breads — or cookies, cakes and breads, for some — that inspire cravings during the holidays, and bakers by trade are not immune to those cravings.
With memories and good taste, these local bakers told us about their favorite holiday treats.
Enjoy their stories, preferably with a holiday treat of your own.
‘100% SPECIAL’
When she was a child, Christmas morning meant racing to great-grandma’s house for cinnamon rolls, said Codi Meyer, a baker at Be Sweet Cafe and Bakeshop, 150 W. Main St., Suite C.
“They were the gooiest cinnamon rolls I’ve ever had in my life,” Meyer said.
They were caramel pecan roll-style with the rolls baked in a caramel sauce, then inverted when taken out of the pan so that the caramel was on top.
Her great-grandma, Margaret Brown, only made cinnamon rolls if guests were in town or for special occasions, such as Christmas. “They were 100% special,” Meyer said.
“I’ve spent 20 years trying to figure it out,” said Meyer about the recipe her great-grandma gave her.
It wasn’t until last Christmas that she finally got her cinnamon rolls to come out as good as Brown’s.
Brown, who is nearly 90, only makes cinnamon rolls with help these days, and Meyer now hosts Christmas breakfast with cinnamon rolls at her house.
“They are to die for,” Meyer said. “Tradition all the way.”
‘KIND OF NOSTALGIC’
Callie Ash grew up with a family tradition of baking sugar cookies at Christmastime.
Her mom would make the dough, and Ash and her sister would roll it out and use cookie cutters to make cookies in the shapes of houses, bells or Santa’s sleigh.
The cookie cutters would leave indented designs on the tops of the cookies that they would then decorate with sugar or sprinkles, said Ash, who now makes plenty of sugar cookies for the holidays as the owner and baker at The Baker’s Boutique, 726 24 Road.
Instead of sprinkles, Ash uses royal icing to decorate her sugar cookies. Royal icing requires a lot more time and patience, but the designs can be colorful and amazing, she said.
She also makes her sugar cookies thicker or more “hearty” than those of her childhood.
Ash’s mother recently moved to Grand Junction and while helping with the move, Ash came across the cookie cutters she used as a child. They took her back to the days when she and her brother and sister would gobble up sugar cookies as soon as possible after they came out of the oven.
She has many cookie cutters at the boutique, but “to see the ones you grew up with, it’s kind of nostalgic and kind of sweet,” Ash said.
‘EVERY CHRISTMAS MORNING’
Jan Wilke has six siblings, and if she wanted a good piece of German stollen on Christmas morning, she had to be quick to get to the breakfast table.
“I was second oldest, so I probably got more than some of the little guys did,” admitted Wilke, who owns Home Style Bakery, 924 N. Seventh St., with her husband, Don.
German stollen is a sweet bread with almonds, walnuts and candied fruit, currants and golden raisins mixed in. “It’s done in a flat loaf shape and it has a fold in it that resembles a swaddled baby,” she said.
“My parents had one every Christmas morning for breakfast as far back as I remember,” Wilke said. They likely purchased it from one of the many German bakeries in St. Louis where she grew up.
Now Wilke’s husband, Don, bakes German stollen each year for the bakery. They offer the sweet bread drizzled with icing or covered in powdered sugar.
Several years ago, they were given a stollen from Germany and found the loaf to be more hefty and dense than their lighter American version, however the flavor was identical, she said.
And Wilke continues to anticipate the bread at Christmas, just as she did as a child. “Of course, Christmas itself as a child was very exciting, you know,” she said.
‘THE ONE THAT I CRAVE’
Yugoslavian Christmas Cookies are LaRae Biocic’s all-time favorite holiday treats.
“I think there are tons of different names,” but she has always known them as Yugoslavian Christmas Cookies, she said.
“It’s the one that I crave every year,” said Biocic, owner of Sweet Kiwi Bakery, 2700 U.S. Highway 50. “It’s a very interesting cookie.”
The dough is pretty basic and includes sour cream, egg whites and flour, and it’s not very sweet, she said.
The dough is rolled into a circle, cut into triangles and a filling made of walnuts, sugar and egg whites is spread on top. Each triangle is rolled into a crescent shape and baked. After they’ve cooled a bit, the cookies are tossed in powdered sugar.
“They are very messy,” Biocic said. With each bite, powdered sugar shoots everywhere, a trait that her four kids know well.
“We want powdered sugar cookies!” is how they ask for them, she said.
Biocic’s grandma used to make them and then her mom, and now Biocic makes them each year at home, unless her mom beats her to it.
“My mom, luckily, she lives here in town so of course they always taste better when Mom makes them.” Biocic said.
Biococ said she likely will bake a small batch of the cookies for her shop during the two weeks leading up to Christmas.
“I think people fall in love with them just as much as we do,” she said.
‘MAKES THE HOLIDAY’
Pam Harsh is pretty focused on sourdough bread, but during the holidays she makes at least one cookie exception with gingerbread.
“In my family, that is something that makes the holiday,” said Harsh, who owns Kulina Lani Organic Sourdough Bakery, which recently opened at 644 North Ave., No. 4.
If kids didn’t want pie after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, they could have a gingerbread boy, she said. The cookies eventually went from being kid food to a tasty addition when an adult came over for coffee.
In 2014, Harsh and her husband, Shane, opened a sourdough bakery on Hawaii’s Big Island. Along with baking gingerbread boys around the holidays, they started to make gingerbread girls called “wahine,” she said.
While the boys have pants piped on in ivory frosting, the girls have ivory grass skirts and hibiscus flowers in their hair. “It became something we were known for,” Harsh said.
When the couple moved back to Colorado — Harsh is originally from Paonia — the gingerbread boys and girls, still in their grass skirts, came with them and can be found at the Grand Junction bakery this holiday season.
“It’s the same recipe that I have made for at least 20 years.” Harsh said.
‘IT’S GOT TO SAY HOME’
“One of my favorite things is obviously cupcakes, which is why my business is a cupcake business,” said Maribeth Losteter, who recently added a food truck to her business, Merigirl Cakes.
The food truck itself is named Edna in memory of her grandma, who raised Losteter and taught her how to bake — “I actually still wear her apron.”
“My grandma made an amazing meatloaf when I was a kid,” she said.
So while Losteter’s cranberry and white chocolate cupcakes are sweet and wonderful, her holiday treat pick is savory: a meatloaf cupcake with mashed potato frosting.
“It’s got to say home to me when I bite into it,” she said. “It brings back childhood memories.”
The Merigirl Cakes food truck with both sweet and savory cupcakes can be found at My Little Haven, 575 25 Road, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays every other week beginning Dec. 15 and 18.
‘LITERALLY INTOXICATING’
Mary Lincoln can’t choose just one holiday treat to love. She has at least three.
“I call them Powder Balls, but they’re like Russian Tea Cakes or (Mexican) Wedding Cakes,” said Lincoln, owner of Slice O’ Life Bakery, 105 W. Third St., in Palisade, about her first pick.
The dough includes pecans and they are rolled into balls that are baked and covered in powdered sugar, she said. “I just love them.”
Next up are “Swedish Gems, which are a spritz cookie that my mom always made,” Lincoln said. “She had the best recipe, and I only realized in the past 10 years that it had been a Pillsbury Bake-Off winner in the late 1950s, early ’60s.”
The recipe that her mom likely snagged from Pillsbury after it won, calls for egg yokes to be hard boiled and then forcibly pushed through a sieve. Swedish Gems take some work, but “they’re fabulous,” Lincoln said.
Her third pick is the “rum cakes that my mother always made.”
“There’s a ton of rum in them,” she said. It is in the batter and in the syrup that is slowly poured over the cakes while they are still warm.
They smell wonderful and are “literally intoxicating,” Lincoln said.
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