Features

By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@timesleader.com
Features Writer
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Yes, her family has a horse and buggy, and, yes, she can hitch up the horse herself.

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Tabias Yoder takes a break as his sister Sarah Yoder and their aunt Mary Byler work the food stand on Public Square. Clark Van Orden/photo

Clark Van Orden/The Times Leader

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Sarah Yoder pauses from the hustle and bustle of selling baked goods at the Farmers Market in Wilkes-Barre on a recent Thursday. Her family also brings baked goods and preserves to the Dallas Farmers Market on Saturdays.

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“I like horses,” 21-year-old Sarah Yoder said as she bustled about, selling cinnamon buns, whoopie pies and snickerdoodles to customers at a recent Farmers Market on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre.

But the Yoders don’t use old-fashioned, four-legged horsepower to haul their baked goods 80 miles from Emma’s Bakery in Turbotville, Northumberland County.

“We take a taxi,” the Amish daughter said, smiling demurely beneath her prayer cap.

The baking of dozens of loaves of raisin bread, mountains of cookies and berry pies with heart designs stamped into the crust begins early – typically at 4 a.m. for Sarah, her 19-year-old sister, Lena, and their mother, Emma.

They do use an electric mixer, so we’ll have to relinquish the quaint mental image of the plain folks stirring by hand with big wooden spoons.

“It’s too bad we don’t do it that way,” Emma Yoder said in a telephone interview. “It would make it more interesting for other people.”

While the family of Amish bakers does use an electric mixer for dough, they still beat eggs with a hand-cranked beater.

“That’s the way we always did it at home,” Emma Yoder said, explaining how many of her recipes were passed down from her mother, Lydia.

Emma Yoder usually sends her baked goods to the Wilkes-Barre Farmers Market on Thursdays and the Dallas Farmers Market on Saturdays, frequently in the care of her sister, Mary Byler, and two of her nine children – Sarah and 14-year-old Tobias.

Here they find eager customers who line up for such treats as monster cookies filled with candy-coated chocolate, cowboy cookies rich with coconut and whoopie pies stuffed with pudding. “Their zucchini bread is very good,” said Lois Davison, 75, of Hanover Township.

“It’s too hot (to bake myself),” said Esther Alles, 70, of Dallas, who considers the Yoder’s chocolate-chip cookies “very, very close to homemade.”

“They have this bread with bacon and cheese in it,” said a customer who gave her name only as Donna. “Toast that for breakfast and it’s just like a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. It’s really good.”

“Look, Donna,” her companion pointed out on a recent Thursday. “They have cookies filled with blueberries.”

Berries, fruits and vegetables also find their way into the preserved foods Emma Yoder’s sister, Dorothy Yoder, puts up.

Condiments, relishes and spreads ranging from blackberry jelly to sweet pickles to green-tomato jam also can be found at the Yoder stand.

Just read the lists of ingredients, and you’ll see how the recipes exemplify the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of serving sweets and sours.

The piccalilli relish contains cabbage, green tomatoes and peppers flavored with brown sugar, dry mustard and turmeric.

Is there some symbolism to this tug of war between sugar and spice?

“No,” Emma Yoder said. “It’s just because it tastes good.”