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If you have been baking cookies in the past three weeks -- or if you plan to in the next couple of days -- you're part of the great American holiday bakeoff.
Allrecipes.com is expecting 4.81 million searches for cookie recipes this month, based on trends so far this year. The rest of the year? The cooking Web site sees an average of just under 1 million cookie searches per month.
And, if you live in Pennsylvania, chances are even higher than many other states that you have the oven mitts on. Per capita, Pennsylvanians are among the top cookie recipe hunters in the nation, according to the cooking Web site.
The rest of the year, baking nationwide is down. But some things don't change.
"If you're going to bake anything, it's going to happen between Thanksgiving and Christmas," said Harry Balzer, a vice president with Port Washington, N.Y., market research firm NPD Group Inc.
That has the effect of concentrating a higher percentage of what baking is done between the year-end holidays because so many people's memories are tied up in the smell of fresh baked cookies or the colorful sight of a beribboned cookie plate.
The power of entrenched habits, combined with a recessionary surge in Americans interested in cooking at home, has not gone unnoticed by the food industry. Some think the bump in holiday-related sales of baking ingredients could be especially strong this year. Consumers looking for ways to cut costs but keep the holiday spirit may choose to give homemade cookies and breads to friends, neighbors, or the piano teacher.
PDFIt's too early to get hard numbers, but, "We may see a rise in that," predicted Laurie Harrsen, director of consumer communication for spice maker McCormick & Co. in Hunt Valley, Md.
Last week, the National Retail Federation released survey data that indicated grocery stores could see last-minute shopping rise from 8.4 percent of shoppers in 2008 to 11.5 percent this year, a shift the trade group credited to more people considering food or candy as a gift item, in addition to sticking with homemade meals.
Cookies, in particular, dominate the field of homemade baked goods, according to NPD's research.
Even cooks who aren't baking a lot of thumbprint cookies might consider stocking up on chocolate chips or other ingredients this month, said Mr. Balzer.
Consumers are seeing a flurry of coupons and sales meant to get consumers to choose one grocer or one food company's products over a competitor's. In certain categories, Mr. Balzer said, "You've got to make your sales in the fourth quarter."
Inside grocery stores, displays at the end of aisles overflow with baking ingredients. That's a necessity, said Ms. Harrsen, at McCormick. "There's only so many bottles that fit on that shelf," she said.
About 20 percent of the spice and seasonings sales industrywide come during November and December with more than one-half billion ounces of spices, seasonings and extracts sold, according to Ms. Harrsen. If everyone wants cloves the same week, that little slot in aisle 7 will be emptied out quickly.
"There's clearly some items that spike heavily during the holiday season," she said, offering her own data to illustrate the point.
Sixty percent of annual industry sales of peppermint extract take place during these two months. Pumpkin pie spice? 75 percent.
The industry sells 16 million ounces of cinnamon in the holiday season and 3 million ounces of ground ginger, enough to make 450 million, 5-inch-tall gingerbread men that could circle the equator 1.5 times.
"It's really hard to have the amount of spices on sale for 20 percent of sales in two months," Ms. Harrsen said.
In some ways, the rush may be even more concentrated than that figure indicates. Consumers really get started on their baking the first weekend after Thanksgiving. It's almost, she said, as if everyone looked up at once and noticed, "Oh, man, it's the holiday season."
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