The Return of the Guerrilla Cookie

Ted Odell stirs up a 250-pound batch of his cookie batter in this 1973 photo from the Daily Cardinal. UW Archives (James Korger)

UW–Madison graduates from the 1960s to the early 1990s might remember a hefty, healthy snack available in local food co-ops called the Guerrilla Cookie. When its eccentric baker, Ted Odell ’64, stopped making the treats around 1990 or 1991, zealous fans tried to re-create the recipe, which Odell kept a closely guarded secret. Most assumed he had taken it to his grave when he passed away in 2021.

Perhaps the most impassioned baker, Karen McKim ’75, MA’77, dedicated a blog to the topic and tried more than 75 recipes. Dave Denison ’82, a former employee of Odell’s (and, full disclosure, this writer’s brother), wrote a lengthy piece in the September 2023 Baffler magazine about the cookie, its creator, and a futile quest to find the recipe. Denison was surprised this past April to hear from someone who actually had the original recipe.

That someone was Steve Apfelbaum, president of the board of the Southern Wisconsin Land Conservancy. SWLC manages the nonprofit Three Waters Reserve, a natural area and event center in Brodhead, Wisconsin, which hosts events such as corporate retreats, parties, and wedding receptions to support conservation efforts.

When Odell passed away, he bequeathed his land to the reserve, which had once been his family’s farm before it was sold in 1925 and converted into a golf course. Odell’s lifelong dream was to see the land returned to a more natural state. He helped SWLC buy the property and quietly gave the reserve his coveted recipe about a year before he died. “He wanted the cookies to go to a good cause,” says Apfelbaum. “He was very mission-oriented, and he wanted them to go to a conservation/education mission.”

The reserve’s chef, John Marks, and his staff re-created the cookie, painstakingly determining the original brands of ingredients that Odell used. Three Waters began selling the original-recipe cookies, as well as some modernized variations, this past spring.

A hefty, healthy snack. Andy Manis for Wisconsin State Journal

“We’d love to sell a lot of cookies, because it will finance a lot of happy birds and happy plants and happy butterflies,” says Apfelbaum.

Inspired by the Guerrilla Cookie, Three Waters is also developing what it calls the Climate Cookie, which will use flour made from native grass seeds such as Virginia wild rye. The native perennial will not require tilling the soil, fertilizer, or pesticides, taking Odell’s environmental ethos to the next level. A national chain will stock it, and a portion of sales will generate royalties for conservation. “Ted was so excited when he realized that the Climate Cookie could start a whole new line of foods derived from native ecosystems,” Apfelbaum says.

In the Baffler article, Denison revealed that Odell’s original intentions for his bakery involved a center that would provide nutritional education to children and donate its profits to worthy causes. Sadly, many of Odell’s later years were spent in frustration because he couldn’t find anyone who shared his dream.

No doubt he is resting peacefully now that his vision is fulfilled at last — and on a scale even greater than he imagined.

Published in the Fall 2024 issue