BEWARE: The Brood X cicada cookies have arrived

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

The owner of a popular Dayton bakery never thought she’d be putting bugs on her cookies.

In honor of the excitement — and often, lack of excitement — surrounding the arrival of the Brood X cicadas, Ashley’s Pastry Shop in Oakwood is selling their own, bug-free, butter with butter cream frosting cicada cookies.

“We’ve done a number of different styles of cicadas to see which one, first of all, looks most realistic, and appears to have (a) nice resemblance, and then in terms of size of cookie and things like that,” said Theresa Hammons, Ashley’s Pastry Shop owner. “So finally, when my decorator Jackie came up with this one, me and my husband were like, ‘This is it. This is our cicada.”

Each hand-decorated, 3-inches round cicada cookie costs $3.25. Ashley’s will keep the cookies in stock “as long as the cicadas are here and as long as the public demands them to be here.”

After the past year and its challenges, Hammons feels people are looking to celebrate anything and everything — including the arrival of the cicadas.

“Our mission is all about celebrating life’s moment’s, life’s memories,” she said. “Did I ever think I was really going to be making bugs on our cookies, probably not. … But it’s all about (keeping) Ashley’s Pastry Shop in the forefront of people’s minds so that when they’re celebrating whatever it is they need to celebrate, they say, ‘Let me see what (Ashley’s Pastry Shop) can create for us.”

Brood X cicadas are beginning to emerge in the Miami Valley as temperatures continue to climb this week.

The periodic cicadas appear every 17 years. Billions are expected to emerge this spring and summer in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Maryland.

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