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….

I haven’t talked business in a while, but we still make cookies, remember? Here are some recent party and wedding favors we did. We still have a few more Fall and Winter favor orders to go but all in all it was an excellent first official wedding season for us.

So we’re flipping dates on the Flea this weekend, not necessarily because of the crappy forecast tomorrow, but because there is a certain guest as the Brownstoner guys are calling her – “She Who Must Not Be Named” – who will be visiting the Flea this Sunday in Dumbo instead of Saturday to shoot some footage for her show. Can you guess who it is?

The girls put on new jackets for the walk to school this morning and Mia noticed that there were leaves on the ground. Yes, fall is back here in Brooklyn after a 3 day flirt with summer temperatures and it feels nice. What better way to acknowledge it than to bring back our Pumpkin Ginger Sandwich Cookies? On a side note – and I’ve been hearing other producers commiserate on this topic – we always get asked “what you got that’s new?”, “anything exciting coming out for x season?”, “what are you doing that’s new for the holidays?”. We really wish we had a whole R&D department to devote to new recipes and cookies, but the reality is, as a small company, we rarely have the spare time to develop new products, sadly, so this year we’re bucking the trend and not coming out with anything new for this holiday season. How’s that for new and refreshing?

I probably say this about every new product, but seriously, this is my favorite cookie right now and we’re excited to introduce them in the shops here and here.

On a different note, since so many of you have asked about my photo setup in the past, I use a Canon G7 which is a point and shoot, but is much more substantial than the tiny models and has many nice manual settings which is what I only use. I don’t have any lighting equipment and just rely on natural light. This has worked well for the most part, but I am seeing the limitations of my beloved little camera and also with the lack of proper lighting equipment. I’ve always enjoyed taking photos and took classes in art school, but never took it seriously until this past year when I started this blog. Taking photos just might be my favorite thing to do these days. So what am I dreaming of? Yes, a digital SLR, a good flash and a lightbox. sigh.

You know, they’re like an adult version of an oreo with a white chocolate filling. As soon as we tasted the earl grey hearts that went into our Valentine’s Day box, we knew that we had to try them as a sandwich cookie. They made their debut at the Pop-up Flea in Dumbo last Sunday and sold out with quite a few people coming back to purchase more. We’ve been dragging our feet with getting them into our shops, and I still would like to get better photos of them, but thought we’d put up a sneak peek. Look for them this week!

Almost forgot! Our feature as Snack of the Day airs on the Rachael Ray show tomorrow, March 3rd.

We’ve put together a small gift box of cookies for Valentine’s Day, in addition to our rosy vanilla marshmallow hearts. The linzer cookies are subtly peppered with pink peppercorns and feature a tart, red currant jam center, but we’re most excited about our Chocolate Earl Grey Hearts! They are small, bite-sized chocolate cookies with an infusion of Earl Grey tea – so elegant and so delicious. We like them so much that we’re thinking of making them one of our year-round regulars, and may even try sandwiching them with our white chocolate filling that is currently in our pumpkin cookies.

And not because I want to, but because it’s fast approaching and we have to. Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that I never really thought about. It’s pretty cute when you have kids, I guess, but when you’re in high school and your school has this thing where you can purchase a flower for somebody and then it gets publicly delivered to all the recipients during homeroom on Valentine’s Day for all to see, whether you get 1 flower or 5 or 10 or NONE, then yeah, it kinda sucks. In any case, here we are, thinking about hearts and flowers and flavors that are red and pink. This is a pink peppercorn linzer cookie that we’re experimenting on with different jams and Mark’s been trying out marshmallows in the shape of a heart. I also really want to get this idea going that I have for our etsy shop. Now that we sell across 3 different venues online, I’d like to experiment with our etsy store and try listing some non-food things (but still food-related), but it’s just a matter of finding the time. We’ve gotten quite busy again, and this week has unfolded much drama that we are mulling over and still trying to figure out. Can’t say much more about it here except to say, we just want to sell cookies, why does it have to be more complicated than that?

Our chocolate gingersnaps were the cookies that got Martha all excited. We’ll have full packages of them tomorrow at the Brooklyn Flea/Time out NY holiday fair, “Gifted”. We almost forgot that we had holiday events lined up for the next three weekends and it’s putting us over the edge to have to make even more packages of cookies, but ironically will be the first chance Mark will get to sit down and have a moment that’s not spent baking or packing. So it’s all good. I planned on helping the table out tomorrow, but we’ve decided that a better use of my time would be to work. Our mode of operation is to tackle and focus on a few tasks a day, so today, for example, I trimmed 175 strips of 3 inch decorative paper that wraps around our boxes. Whatever it takes…

These cute little mini gingermen are being delivered tomorrow morning for a photoshoot for OXO. Made from our Brown Sugar Gingerspice recipe, they may make an appearance at our shop closer to the holidays.

Our fall pumpkin ginger sandwich cookies are at our etsy shop now and I have to say, I am in love with this cookie. It’s just so seasonal for fall, what with the pumpkin and spices. The cookie is slightly crisp on the outside and softer throughout, paired with a pretty great white chocolate filling that is spiked with white pepper to undercut the sweetness that white chocolate can sometimes have. Our friend Christy who was over yesterday was the first person to try it and judging by her reaction, she enjoyed them too. Mark will also have some at the Brooklyn Flea today if you are around the Fort Greene area – looks a bit misty out there, but hopefully it won’t be a complete wash.