Courtney, Chief Cookie Officer: Making gluten free cookies for everyone
This is my craft
Everyone should be able to enjoy a treat and feel good about the ingredients used and sourced to make them.
Due to personal health issues Courtney had to go gluten free in her diet. The choices of gluten free cookies available, though, didn’t meet her standard of a treat with fun flavors.
Gluten free cookies seem to have a lower standard in the perception of people. Using always the same simple recipes and ingredients such as chocolate chips. Courtney aims to change that story with her own gluten free cookie creations.
Growing up on a small farm in Kansas, but being an avid Vermont lover, her recipes are inspired by Vermont’s local ingredients and typical flavors, e.g. maple syrup or apple butter and by her travels. A trip to Hawaii turned into two limited summer editions, Ube crinkle cookie, using Ube, a purple yam. And another cookie with maple sugar candied macadamia nuts from Oahu that also comes with dried pineapple.
Did I make you hungry, yet?
Seeing Courtney’s creations makes you wonder about them being gluten free. The King Arthur flour gluten free baking flour, which is also a Vermont product, makes this possible. Oh, and the good butter. Isn’t butter the key ingredient for a great taste anyway?
“I’m passionate about high quality ingredients and to feel good about what’s in your body.”
In using local ingredients, she also helps to support other small businesses and farms, such as the one where she sources the eggs for her cookies from, Birdsong Farm in Stockbridge, Vt. For her Buckwheat creations, such as the Chocolate Sea Salt Swirl Cookies Courtney uses the Buckwheat flour from Birkett Mills Buckwheat from Penn Yan, New York.
Turning her passion into a business came naturally and is now growing organically, she says. It took a while, though, for her to make it happen, she tells me: “It continuously showed up in my life, but I’d always pushed it aside. I’ve got three degrees, but never considered baking to be my future business seriously.”
It took several convincing conversations with friends and family - this must be a sign, these people are telling me something! -, with her husband being her biggest cheerleader to finally having the gut to do it. The younger Courtney wasn’t brave enough, she says, and almost regrets of not having tried to pursue her business sooner.
Within just a couple years her cookies are not only sold at farmers markets. A request from customers from out of state started her online shop. Another request will soon be turned into reality, gluten free cookie baking mixes, made by Chief Cookie Officer, Courtney, for everyone to make their favorite sweet treats at home - and eat them warm out of the oven, too, of course.
Her background in non-profit organizations and advocacy is what has shaped her passion as well: “I care about the community and the state of Vermont. I want a business that benefits the people in my community.”
Two upcoming events are proof of that dedication, cookies for good campaign, where parts of the sales go the organization, as well as Veteran’s Day in November, reminding her of her husband’s service in the military.
Speaking of Courtney’s husband, one of the two goals she shared with me would be to retire her husband and build her business in a way so they’d be able to spend their days together.
And what’s the other goal?, I’m asking. Courtney: “I would love to see my cookies on a shelf at Whole Foods!”
Find out more about Courtney and her gluten free cookies here.