Help Gulfport Historical Society ring in the holidays with delicious homemade holiday cookies and caroling!
Bring your favorite holiday cookie – and, if you like, copies of your recipes – to share.
For just $5, you can enter your cookie into a contest to determine Gulfport's Finest Holiday Cookie! A panel of distinguished judges, including Gulfport's Gecko Queen Elizabeth Hendricks, Golden Dinosaurs' Audrey Dingeman, and A Friend Who Bakes' Brittney Sherley, will conduct a blind taste test to select the winning cookie, whose baker gets money! Judges will choose winners in three categories:
• Scrumptiously Seasonal (winner gets a prize from Gulfport's fabulous homegrown bakery, A Friend Who Bakes)
• Gloriously Gluten Free
• Vibrantly Vegan (winner gets a prize from Tampa Bay's favorite plant-based eatery, Golden Dinosaur Vegan Delicatessen)
Meanwhile, enjoy Mexican hot chocolate, mulled wine, and other holiday treats while singing favorite winter and holiday songs in front of the museum with local choir-leaders Jon Arterton and James Mack.
Doors open at 7 p.m., and the cookie contest and caroling starts at 7:30 p.m. We'll announce the winners around 8:30 p.m. There is no cost to attend, and entering your cookies into the contest is not required. If you just want to bring some to share, please do!
Come on down and join us for the fun! Holiday sweaters and/or other seasonal get-ups are especially encouraged!
Entering a cookie? Here's what you need to do: Bring four printed copies of the recipe, with your name and email address on each copy, along with at least two dozen cookies on a reusable plate, to the Gulfport History Museum by 7 p.m. on the day of the contest. No printer? You may also email the recipe as an attached file or Google Doc to cathy@gulfporthistoricalsociety.org by noon on the day of the porch party. Please note if your cookie qualifies for the GF or vegan categories, which will not disqualify it from the traditional category. Come hungry!
(Pictured above: 2019's GHS cookie prize winner, Renee Carr, and former Gecko Queen, Jodi Zelman Robinson)