It’s Fake! Summer! in NYC right now. It’s not just that the temps are warm, it’s also unseasonably humid which is pissing everyone off right now. But you know, it’s the end of September and no matter how warm it is, everyone’s trying to ignore it by convincing themselves that Fall is really here and consuming as many pumpkin products out there. Like these Pumpkin Ginger Sandwich Cookies, which are again making their seasonal appearance. You can buy them here or here.

Also new in our shops is the Brooklyn Market Cookie, which you guys helped name. These are smaller, more petite versions than the big ones we sell at the markets, but you can now finally get your own shipped right to you. Cookie season is back! Fall is here! (not).

ps. that brooklyn bottle btw is by Elyssa Ettinger.

But no, you don’t understand, ’cause that’s all I’ve been doing lately, taking photos of cookies. And marshmallows. And more cookies. Because you know how when you fix one thing and then put it back with the old things, it just makes the older stuff look like crap? Yeah, that. Well it was clear from the beginning that the new photos wouldn’t work with the old ones, partly because of scale as I took the early product shots with a macro setting on my point and shoot camera. Soooo…I’ve been retaking photos of our products and editing and cropping and then uploading all this new content on our new website (which should launch in about 10 or so days), and after it’s all up and done, I never want to take pictures of cookies again.

But look, I even took photos of all the packaging because it’s nice to be able to see how your products will come shipped to you (ok, maybe it’s because I don’t want to have to answer any more questions about how the cookies and marshmallows come packaged), and I was finally able to get decent photos where the cellophane isn’t all crinkly and reflective and weird. Don’t say we never cared.

If you’ve been to our Etsy site in the last week, you may have noticed some of the new photos. I couldn’t bear to look at the old photos anymore and didn’t want to wait till our new site was up. Now that some of the worst offenders have been replaced (I’m looking at you, biscotti and brownies), I can rest easy on retaking some of the other products that need a refresh. Speaking of our new website, it should relaunch mid-April and I couldn’t be more excited. I don’t remember the last time I was this excited about launching a new website in like, ever, so this is a big deal.

Some other biz news (lest you forget that this blog is also about the business, and not just some random babbling from an insomniac):

We’ll be at the The Village Voice’s Choice Eats tasting event tonight in the VIP Sweets Room. The event has been sold out for awhile and no wonder, what with that lineup of restaurants on hand. Mark’s going solo, as he usually does at events, and this is bumming him out a bit because it might mean that he won’t get a chance to go and grab some food.

Some recent press: The Kitchen Conversion Poster is in this month’s issue of Bust Magazine, and Joonbug.com did a great writeup of our products which you can read here. And did anyone catch us on TV? Our cookies were on the Cooking Channel’s Food(ography) show hosted by Mo Rocca. The theme of the show was “Food and Websites” and our Etsy homepage and product shots were splashed across the screen quite a number of times. Yeah, ok, we totally giggled every time we saw our stuff.

Thanks to all of you who helped us raise money to send to Japan by buying from us in the last 2 weeks. We’ll be sending a portion from all the sales we made during that time today, along with a company match. And watch for some news on a contribution we’ve made to an exciting benefit project to Japan.

And finally….I know it took us FOREVER to decide on a cookie name (oh, what cookie? I know, you probably forgot about it, it was so long ago), but we did pick a name and despite some of the very creative and sometimes really funny names you guys came up with (“chunky mudburger”, submitted by Tin, makes me chuckle every single time and it’s what I’m secretly going to call it to myself), we decided to go simple and stay a bit more in character with our other product names. The Brooklyn Market Cookie. It fits, don’t you think? Particularly since it’s only being sold at the Brooklyn Flea for now (but maybe not for long!). So Christine, you are the winner since you coined it first (check your email!), but Miss Lauren, I know you also posted this name a few hours later, so you get some free cookies too the next time you stop by the Flea. Thanks, Ladies!

So our 3rd year of business has now officially come to a close. Did we think we were going to make it this far and for this long? I don’t know what we expected, but onto year 4…

…in naming these cookies. I think we asked for suggestions last year when we first introduced them and believe it or not, we still haven’t properly named them. Ok, so we’re lame, but we’re not exactly great at naming cookies. Look at our shop – everything’s just named after what’s in them. I mean, “Coconut Five Spice White Chocolate Cookies”? What kind of long-winded name is that? Lame. (edit: some people got confused. We’re not trying to rename our Coconut cookies, which is in fact named that ridiculously long name, but the cookies in the photos – see ingredients below).

So what’s in these cookies? Cocoa nibs, macadamia nuts, dried cherries, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and oatmeal. So far, they’re only available at markets and fleas and they usually sell out. They’re big and satisfying and different than all the smaller, more refined cookies that we sell online, but I’ll tell you what. If you come up with a name that we like, we’ll mail you half a dozen of these cookies, but I can’t promise that the packaging is going to be pretty. We haven’t figured that out yet (don’t worry, we won’t send them in, like, a Tupperware container or a Ziplock bag or anything). They really are best fresh, but we’ve been testing the shelf life and we may be able to ship them. You can be our guinea pig. And if there isn’t a name that catches our eye, we’ll pick a random comment and we’ll send you cookies anyway.

You have until Friday Thursday 1pm EST. Bonus points for sticking “Brooklyn” in the name, though by no means are we totally set on that.
Ok, go (and oh, right….I was reminded, we can only ship to the US, especially these cookies. Sorry!!).

I think Mark first made these pink peppercorn shortbread cookies 2 years ago. We instantly liked them. We liked the subtle peppery aftertaste (entirely different from black pepper, btw), and we liked the pink flecks on the cookie which is why we offered them during our first Valentine’s Day collection. It just goes to show you how long it takes sometimes for us to push cookies out into the world as their own package. They’ve gone through a few different incarnations, including a linzer cookie which we had available for a limited time, but we’ve finally settled on this final version of the cookie with a red currant chocolate filling from this year’s Valentine’s Day box. (As a related note, you may or may not remember that our Coconut 5 Spice White Chocolate Cookies also emerged from a few incarnations, first as a biscotti, then as a macaroon, and finally to the drop cookie).

They’re finally for sale on their own here or in our Etsy shop. Also, can I say how excited I am about our new website, which hopefully go live in the Spring?

And…new camera FTW!

I’m all Halloween’d out even before Halloween. This is what happens when Halloween lands on a Sunday. It’s non-stop Halloween and sugar and candy all weekend long. Saturday was back to back parties starting at 10:30 in the morning and going till 4:30 in the afternoon. That’s 6 HOURS of Halloween pumpkin painting, pizza eating, cookie decorating, ghost making, costume parading, and candy hoarding. And will you take a look at this cookie decorating party? My neighbor went all out. There were more kinds of frosting and sprinkles and candy here than I’ve ever seen on a single table. I think this is even out Martha-Stewarting Martha Stewart. Their whole house looked like Halloween. Aside from a few pumpkins here and there, we’ve got nothing at our house. It never really occurred to me to put up bats or pumpkin lights for the kids, duh. I mean look at those popcorn hands. Candy corn for the nails and popcorn stuffed into rubber latex gloves. Genius. Between this party and last week’s Alice’s tea party that the girls were invited to (which I will tell you all about later), the pressure is on for Claudine’s birthday week. I’m not usually one to fall for this kind of pressure, but damn. Suddenly I’m feeling a little bit inadequate.

Mark’s been busy the last 2 days prepping and baking and juicing for the “World’s First Food Truck Drive-In” at the NYC Food Film Festival in Dumbo. The event is sold out, but if you’re one of the thousands of ticket holders, he’ll be bringing these along with our usual treats (sadly I won’t be able to make it as the girls have back to back birthday parties in the park all day, but our friend Mike will be on hand to help out. Say hello to Mike!):

As usual, our very popular Passionfruit Mint Limeade. It sells out at every Flea so Mark will be bringing more.

We’re also bringing back our Watermelon Lime Mint Coolers just because it’s not summertime without some watermelon. *Mark just informed me it will probably be Watermelon Ginger, with maybe a splash of lime and mint if we have some to spare from the Limeade

The Butterscotch Bars will be making a rare appearance!

And I’m pretty much addicted to these new Streusel Oatmeal Bars sprinkled with chopped nuts. Flavors change from market to market and this week it will be apricot.

Oh, and these things right here? It’s our new cookie. It has everything. Cocoa nibs, macadamia nuts, dried cherries, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and oatmeal. It doesn’t have a name yet (any suggestions?) and they’re bigger and soft. If you’re not coming to the Food Festival, not to worry – we’ll be bringing them to the Flea. They are awesome.

Hungry now?

For this year’s Valentine’s Day gift box we’ve brought back our Earl Grey Hearts, sprinkled generously with coarse pink sugar and introduced a variation of last year’s cookie: Pink Peppercorn Hearts (one of my favorites). There’s also 8 Creme de Cassis infused Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. All are cute and mini. In the shops here or here.

Coming up for the weekend, we’re back at the Flea, this time indoors in Brooklyn at the most grand and amazing Art Deco space you can imagine: the lobby of the former Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower. Check out the slideshow from last weekend’s opening. Foodies will be downstairs in the bank vault! We’ll be there this Sunday and every other weekend. Check this space for dates.

January is typically our R&D month since it’s a month where we can catch our breaths, but Valentine’s Day is just around the corner so we’re scrambling a bit. Stay tuned…

Oh, by the way, I changed some things around on the blog, but they are subtle changes that might go unnoticed which reminds me that as designers, we might fuss and fidget with details for hours and days and not have it mean anything to anyone but ourselves, lol.

The last 2 days looked like the photos above – that’s all we did for hours and hours for days and days. Mark may have set a new record for himself for baking 2000 cookies in 7 hours. We’re pretty much done now with holiday shipping but of course instead of celebrating, the day was fraught with Post Office stress. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves right around 1pm for totally jamming and getting out all our corporate orders the last 2 days. 50 boxes the day before and 70 large boxes were ready to be shipped so Mark decided to reward himself with a scheduled postal pickup.

Now, if you live in our neighborhood and have ever seen a guy pushing a granny cart full of shipping boxes, sometimes even with 2 carts, one in each hand, that would be Mark who makes trips like this about 5-6 times a week (I told you he works hard). 70 large boxes, however, is a different story all together and too big to shlep to the Post Office. Except when the Post Office NEVER COMES. So with 40 minutes left till Post Office closing, Mark takes out both car seats (and if you’ve ever installed a booster seat, you all know how much a pain in the ass this is to reinstall) loaded up the car with as many packages as he could and sped to the Post Office, only to return to do this a second time with the rest of the packages that didn’t fit the first time around with only minutes to spare until closing.

And so, of course the question to ask is, why did this have to happen? Why can’t you expect a service to come through when you sign up for it? Why do we have that unnerving sense of mistrust when dealing with anything Post Office related? I don’t think we are ever going to schedule a Postal pick up again. He missed making a delivery to the Ace Hotel and didn’t get into the kitchen until much much later because of waiting around for something that never happened.

But folks, we are done with the mad shipping portion of the holidays. Now we’re onto the uncharted waters of preparing for 4 consecutive market days in a row next week for the Brooklyn Flea Gifted Market. Getting all our corporate and site orders out was a big relief….but it’s not over yet….