You could say after 750 pounds of flour, 700 pounds of sugar, 2,250 eggs and 400 pounds of butter, the bakers at St. Francis Academy are cookie experts.

        The team of dozens of volunteers came together starting in late September to bake more than 1,500 pounds of cookies to raise money for St. Francis Academy in Bally.  The cookies will be sold, as they have for many years, at the elementary school's holiday bazaar on Nov. 14.

        What makes this fundraiser unique; however, are its dedicated volunteers and its old-time recipes.  Many of the people volunteering have been doing it for decades.  This year marks the 40th anniversary of the event.

        "I do enjoy it," said Angie Snyder, who coordinates the cookie-baking effort with Mary Ellen Maloney.  "I actually helped my mom when I was younger and in school.  Now I'm a part of the home and school association."

        Volunteers come out day and night first to make the dough, shape and refrigerate it and then decorate and bake it into scrumptious cookies that, this year, will help fund repairs to the school's aging air conditioning system.  Those people range in age from six to mid-70's. 

        They include not only students and their families and friends, but church volunteers from Most Blessed Sacrament Parish, also in Bally, and the youth group from St. Columbkill Parish in Boyertown.

        "It's nice to be a part of something like this that's a big fundraiser," said Peg Strunk of Bally, who's been volunteering on and off for 30 years.

        "We typically sell out in less than two hours.  People, to this day, are lined up at the doors with bags and boxes to come get their cookies.  When we open those doors at 8:00 they flood in," Snyder said.

        Jane Keill, Snyder's mother, said after all the work put in, it's nice to see the cookies go fast at the bazaar, which runs from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the school.

        "It's wonderful, absolutely wonderful," she noted.    

        Each of the varieties the group makes is from scratch.  Their biggest seller is cut-outs, made with an old butter cookie recipe handed down from volunteer Barbara Stahl's mother.  They also make and bake oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, chocolate chip and gingerbread men and women.  The gingerbread cookie recipe is also one of Stahl's, a tried and true favorite.

        Thirty-nine years ago, when cookies were introduced to the bazaar, the cut-outs were hand-rolled.  Today, the group has the convenience of a sheeter, which spreads the dough out evenly to 2-inches in thickness.  Each cookie is still cut out and hand decorated with love by many of the younger volunteers.

        "The feedback is that they're great cookies and they sell really fast," said St. Francis Principal Tom Murphy.

        "It has great community involvement.  Kids, moms, dads and grandparents are making the cookies.  It's an advantage to not only be helping the school academically or maintaining the school, but also spiritually it helps us become more like a family."

        Murphy, who said the bazaar brings in around $10,000 on average, 80 percent of that from cookie sales, called the effort "sensational."

        For more information on the bazaar, visit the St. Francis Academy home and school association's Facebook page.