Nicole Joseph did not plan to get into the cookie-making business, but, like most of her endeavours, what she does, she does well.
Her sugar cookies are moist, have a great texture, and, like her icing, are not too sweet. And of course, they taste great.
The designer, artisan and creator told Business Day she has always been fascinated by the culinary arts, so when she went to a fair about eight years ago and a booth allowed people to decorate their own cookies, she tried it, then signed up for a class.
At the time, she made cookies for the class and posted photos of them on social media. Then she donated a cookie "bouquet" as a door prize for a friend’s fundraiser and posted them as well, and people started asking her to do more.
Several years later, in 2017, she had the idea of making and selling dumplings of all types, since almost every culture has dumplings.
“I registered the business as Stuffed Kitchen, to indicate things stuffed into other things, but also (because) when you eat and you feel satisfied, you feel stuffed.”
But instead of dumplings, the 51-year-old mother of two kept getting more requests for her decorated sugar cookies. So in 2021, she started to start selling them through Stuffed Kitchen. At the time she was using the recipe she was given for her cookie class, but, when she decided to make them as a business, she developed her own recipes for both the cookies and the icing, which were completed just before Christmas 2022.
She also wants to have her own signature style, so she uses her skills as a former mehndi artist, decorating most of her cookies with intricate piping. Not to mention that she likes putting cookies on sticks.
All her feedback was positive, with people telling her the cookies are not too hard or soft, but moist and rich but with a light, fresh taste. She explained that she gets that consistency and taste because they are made with a lot of real butter – which is her largest cost and makes the cookies expensive to make.
“Over time I figured out I don’t want to be a production baker. I want to design and create cookie products that are geared towards specific occasions, like Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s.”
He business model is to bake a batch for an occasion, and people would order from that batch. When it’s done, that’s it. No extra orders. In that way, she could bake fresh and ensure a quality product.
However, she also gives clients the option of buying plain sugar cookies with separate icing so they could dip the cookies in as much icing as they want, with a minimum order quantity of two dozen.
[caption id="attachment_1002597" align="alignnone" width="683"] Nicole Joseph decorates most of her cookies with intricate piping. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
In addition, she is in conversation with a few specialty stores to sell her cookies, and in the future, she intends to take orders for custom cookies for special events, creating wedding or party favours.
She is also creating a chocolate cookie recipe.
“I haven’t abandoned the dumpling idea. It’s
