North Huntingdon grandma's love fills wedding cookie table
There is one ingredient in Adrienne “Baba” Frishof’s homemade cookies that can’t be measured — love.
Frishof, 78, crafted 90 dozen cookies — 17 of the 26 varieties — for her granddaughter’s Oct. 11 wedding cookie table.
“We had little takeout containers for guests to take cookies with them,” said her granddaughter, Carli (Polczynski) Meadville, 27, of Irwin. “I saw people grabbing them by the armfuls to put them in those containers.”
There wasn’t a cookie left, Meadville said.
People wanted to take home not only amazing-tasting cookies but also be able to sample the authentic Slovak tradition behind each cookie, Meadville said.
“Baba is incredible in every sense of the word,” Meadville said. “Not too many people can say they have a grandmother like mine, let alone one who makes (almost) their entire wedding cookie table from scratch. Our family is very, very close.”
The family heritage means everything to Frishof. She recalls watching and helping her Baba make cookies and wanted that connection for her grandchildren, Meadville and her brother, C.J. Polczynski.
When Frishof heard the wedding reception dinner menu was going to be Mexican, she immediately thought she wanted her granddaughter and husband-to-be, Mitchell Meadville, to have something representing the family’s beloved Slovak connection.
“The food was Mexican,” Frishof said. “I am thinking, ‘we are Slovak and there’s no nut rolls, there’s no kolache and no stuffed cabbage?’ I mean, we needed something ethnic.”
So she went directly to her kitchen at her independent living home at Redstone Highlands in North Huntingdon, pulled out the cookie trays that belonged to her Baba, put on an apron and started baking.
Frishof made lady locks, chocolate gobs, buckeyes, apricot kolaches, walnut kiffles, orange creamsicle, dark chocolate dipped macaroons, Mexican almond wedding cookies, thumbprints with sprinkles, brownie cookies, strawberry kolaches, strawberry lemon cookies, cherry Garcia cookies, sugar cookie leaves, strawberry pinwheels, lemon crinkle cookies and red velvet crinkle cookies.
For the wedding, all the cookies were put on trays ahead of time. Some of the fall leaf-shaped cookies were added to each tray to give a pop of color.
“It worked out perfectly, too, because having the leaf cookies and intermingling them with all the cookies was so much better than just having them as a type of cookie,” Meadville said. “It was like a little edible decoration.”
The reception for 125 guests was held at the Springwood Conference Center in Verona. The Mexican food ended up being a hit, Meadville said. They had shredded chicken with lime, braised short rib enchiladas with rice and beans and vegetables and chicken tortilla soup.
When Meadville and her grandmother met to discuss the setup at the venue, the planner mentioned one table for the cookies.
“This is Pittsburgh,” Frishof said. “The cookie table is something you automatically do and we needed more than one table. We weren’t doing a small cookie table. I wanted the ethnic pieces there for my granddaughter and her husband and the guests.”
Frishof was born in Braddock. She and her husband, Barry “Pappy” Frishof, lived in Irwin for decades and raised their daughter Jodi Polczynski before moving to Redstone. The couple are long-time members of Stephen’s Byzantine Catholic Church in North Hutingdon, where the wedding took place. Meadville’s parents, Jodi and Michael Polczynski, were married there in 1994.
The Meadvilles are living in the Frishofs’ former home in Irwin.
“I don’t want my grandchildren to lose their nationality,” Frishof said. “I ask people their nationality all the time because I want to learn about what’s important to them and what they look forward to when they go to a family gathering or wedding.”
One of Meadville’s first memories is making sugar cookies with her grandmother. The kitchen was a mess and the cookies weren’t shaped perfectly, but they tasted really, really good, she said.
They’ve tested various icings and added jimmies and sprinkles to edible glitter. They experimented by turning the cookie cutters on their sides or upside down to create a different shape of cookie.
Baking the day after Thanksgiving is a tradition they continued this year on Nov. 28.
“We start baking early,” Meadville said. “We turn on Christmas carols and I wear my Christmas pajamas and we bake. My Pappy comes in and tries to sneak a cookie. He says, ‘I don’t think this one looks good. Maybe I’ll just eat it to get it out of your way.’ ”
She said the whole family looks forward to her grandmother’s cookies.
”My Baba is a very humble person,” Meadville said. “She just got done baking for my wedding and now she’s baking for Christmas. I am blessed enough to have my grandparents here and I was blessed for my wedding to have homemade cookies made from scratch. I mean, who’s lucky enough to say that? Not too many people.”
Meadville said her husband looks forward to the cookies, too.
“The first couple of years we were dating, he said, ‘Oh man, these are really good,’ ” Meadville said. “I said, yes, I know. We’ve been eating them our whole lives. My Baba is a baker from way back. She’s incredible. I had a sellout wedding (with all the cookies being gone) because of her. Every ounce of cookie was gone. That’s a testament to her that all the cookies were gone. I’ve never seen a wedding like this. “
Every time Frishof makes ethnic cookies, she said she thinks about her grandmother.
“She would pull out this big board and put flour on it and add eggs and the other ingredients,” Frishof said, as she teared up. “Everything was done by hand.”
And with love.
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a TribLive reporter covering the region's diverse culinary scene and unique homes. She writes features about interesting people. The Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist began her career as a sports reporter. She has been with the Trib for 26 years and is the author of "A Daughter's Promise." She can be reached at jharrop@triblive.com.
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