Alabama's new official state cookie the Yellowhammer was created by a fourth-grader

All foodies have at some point wondered, why their state or area does not have an official food. State officials in Alabama have sorted this problem for their foodies. They have an official state cookie now. Governor Kay Ivey has given this honor to Yellowhammer, a treat made by Mary Claire Cook. She is a fourth grader at Montgomery’s Trinity Presbyterian School.

Cook and her classmates were part of a competition that would decide the cookie that best represented Alabama. Some students then brought the idea of having a state cookie to Representative Reed Ingram. This bill was passed in the state’s House and Senate, as per the Smithsonian Magazine.

The Facebook page of Alabama read, "While studying Alabama history this year, fourth-grade students at Montgomery’s Trinity Presbyterian School noticed the Legislature had designated an official flower, bird, tree, cake, and even a whiskey, but there was no official state cookie. They took it upon themselves to rectify the issue and created a recipe for the Yellowhammer cookie, which is made with Alabama-grown pecans, peanuts, oats, and other ingredients."

It said further, "To lobby on behalf of their bill, students from Trinity gave a presentation to members of the Alabama House Republican Caucus at their meeting this week and passed out samples of the Yellowhammer cookie to each lawmaker in attendance. Given Alabama’s complicated history on civil rights and race relations, we would suggest that the Oreo might also be an appropriate option for the official state cookie."

The Yellowhammer is special as interestingly, peanuts are Alabama's state legumes and pecans are its state nuts. “We selected the cookie because it has three ingredients that really encapsulate the state of Alabama, with pecans from Mobile and Baldwin counties, nuts from the Dothan area and oats from central Alabama,” says Russel Powell, a Trinity senior, to Sally Pitts of the local TV station WSFA. Before the bill became a law, the Governor tasted the cookie, “Sweet Home Alabama just got a little sweeter,” she said, per the New York Post.

Alabama is not the first and the only state to have a cookie. New Mexico made Biscochito its official cookie in 1989. Massachussettes made Chocolate Chip Cookie it's own in 1997. But states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan have said no to cookie bills. As for New Mexico, it also chose its state vegetable. After a debate between its legislators. chile and the pinto bean both became the official state vegetable for New Mexico. 

At the Trinity school, this was an opportunity to learn about collaborative work, cooperation, state symbols and how a bill becomes a law. “We’re super blessed to have all of our students from K-12 on one campus,” Kathryn Bandy, a college counselor at Trinity, tells AL.com’s Mike Cason. “So we get to partner all the time with students no matter what their ages are. This was an easy partnership between fourth graders learning Alabama history and seniors learning government. So this gave us the opportunity to put all of the stuff they read about in books [into practice].”