By Beverly O’Shea
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Vera Ciavaglia has two bookcases, floor to ceiling, in her Seabrook home to hold her 900 cookbooks. That’s right—900 cookbooks. That’s the number she estimates she collected over the past 40 years.

The cookbooks that don’t fit in the bookcases are in containers around her home. But she is always trying new recipes on her own too, and she often gives her Seabrook friends samples of her baking.

Prize-winning baker
This year Ciavaglia, a longtime member of the Woman’s Club of Asbury Park, won a baking competition for the District of the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs for a yeast coffee cake and a coconut pecan cream cake. She represented the 38 clubs in the Shore District of the federation.

She says, “I was excited because it was a state competition.” That means her recipes were cited as “the best” over entries from 350 clubs statewide. Last year she won for her “fantasy fudge.” She won three golds this year in the local competition, which went on to compete at the state convention. Two of them won top prizes and the other won third place.

All in the family
Her mother was an excellent cook who rarely used a recipe, Ciavaglia says. She herself is “always in the kitchen,” and her husband likes to cook too. She’s the one who brings the dessert when her family (two sisters and their families of 16 nieces and nephews and one nephew’s triplets) get together for holiday meals. One year, she recalls, she baked 200 dozen cookies at Christmas time.

She also bakes for the Sodality’s sale at her church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in Asbury Park, and volunteers at the boutique at Jersey Shore Medical Center.

“Baking is a relaxation for me,” she says.

Ciavaglia has offered to share a recipe for basic sweet roll dough for readers to try. She says it’s a versatile sweet yeast dough that can be refrigerated overnight or baked the same day. Variations use a half recipe of the dough so anyone can make two kinds at once.