My Cookie Box Development Process
Plus, a promo code for preorders, market dates, and more!
See You Around Town?
Dear Chicagoans, if you haven’t already seen through Instagram, I’ll be around town this week. Find me at:
✨ Guild Row in Avondalee this Friday, 12/15 from 3-7p for a Holiday Fête thrown by Motorshucker. I will be joined by other small, independent makers across the city, so come out and shop for some cute stuff made with lots of love!
✨ Casa Cactus in Albany Park this Saturday, 12/16 from 10am-sell out for a good ole fashioned café pop-up.
I’ll be slinging cookie boxes and mini cakes (both available for preorder), plus classics and some new thangs too.
Use code HOLIDAY to get 10% off your preorder so you reserve your cookie box or mini cake before I sell out (which happens often, sorry). Preorders close Thursday evening <3
The boxes feed 2-5, and are a true labor of love. Flavors include strawberry pandan wreaths, salty egg yolk choco shorties, dirty chai biscuits, matcha amaretti, pecan cardamom crescents, and hojicha brown sugar meringues. (The meringues are not photographed because I snuck those in last minute, and I did so because they are delicious.)
The Process: How I Developed The Cookie Box
The cookie boxes are kind of a wild feat. I won’t lie, I flew by the seat of my pants and developed these cookies all in one go. My chaotic process kind of works like this:
Step 1: Initial ideation. I started with a cookie I know everyone already loves (the salty egg yolk choco shortbread), I think about what I and others love about it, connect it with my own knowledge/experiences, and then I build from there. To me, shortbread cookies are these buttery bbs similar to ones I experienced in those Danish cookie tins I’d always find with sewing materials inside. And from there, we have a theme.
Step 2: Flavor development. Next, I’ll think of flavors I love and feel connected to. I especially lean towards landing on combinations that are missing from the general landscape of bakeries and restaurants wherever I am. For example, the strawberry pandan wreaths are inspired by one of my favorite childhood vending machine cookies, curiously developed by a jam-company-turned-theme-park. They were these perfect, rich whipped shortbreads with a red jam filled center. Now let’s make them even more special by remixing them with pandan and my own housemade strawberry rhubarb jam. Yum.
One cookie flavors turns into two turns into three. Every cookie riffing off of the last until I am satisfied with the flavors, textures, and balance of everything all together. This particular set has cookies made with tea, fresh spices, and Asian flavors. I think it’s very Rad Joy — whatever that means, I’m still finding out!
Step 3: R+D. I will research dozens of recipes, reading notes and reviews on each, discerning which seem more likely to be legit, combining tips and tricks I’ve picked up in this journey of mine, and developing my own, or infusing my flavors and modifications into recipes I already like. Then, of course, I bake and see what happens!
It doesn’t always work out the first, or second, or third time. To be honest, R+D is a very expensive part of the process, and I don’t get paid for it. It can be frustrating, it can be long, and it is also very rewarding when the *final* product is one I deem worthy of sharing with others.
And that’s it. I’ve just distilled hours and hours of what seems like a combination of both creative and technical work into this little guide for you. I love baking, it’s such a wiiiild ride.
Xo,
V