Behind the Scenes: Ingredient upgrade

Edition #2: It's been a few weeks since we pulled back the curtain on our bakery. But today, we’re back! Apologies for the delay - we’ve been a bit distracted by the launch of chocolate-dipped peanut butter... the feedback has been amazing, so thank you all! It has already inspired some ideas for spring, but I’m getting ahead of myself, again.

So this fall, we’ve been busy on a little bit of everything. We’ve improved some old favorites (more on this later), launched a new bag pack (Peanut Butter), and dropped our first-ever Halloween exclusive (Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter). All while getting ready for the holidays...but that’s for another time.

Let’s savor the fall season while we have it. Now, about that ingredient upgrade... let’s talk brown sugar. 

From the bakery,

Chad

#1: A BROWN SUGAR LESSON

While we don’t dare change a thing to our Original Scotch Oatmeal cookies, everything else in our bakery is subject to slight tweaks and upgrades. This means we are constantly evaluating every single ingredient used in each batch of cookies. And over the past few months, we’ve been frustrated with our brown sugar. Not because it’s not great brown sugar. By all accounts, it is a high-quality, top-tier brand. But it doesn’t provide the robust flavor or mouthfeel our bakers were longing for. For our test batches, we tried switching brands and placing smaller, more frequent orders… but to no avail. So when you can’t solve it on the open market, well, you bring it in-house. And that’s exactly what we did.

Making your own brown sugar is actually incredibly simple. It's sugar and molasses. From the first test bake with our in-house brown sugar, the signs were clear - a richer, rounder profile with a silkier feel. The new brown sugar was here to stay. After lots of tweaking with ratios for Double Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, and Peanut Butter, we rolled it out without saying a word.

Over the past few weeks, we've gotten a number of notes from you saying things like "it's just more...chocolatier, I don't know how else to say it" or "the peanut butter tastes so much fresher."

We love the feedback and hope you'll get a chance to enjoy a bag or two. We made the Pick Your Own Bag feature so you can try a new variety without breaking the bank.

#3 HAPPIEST OF HALLOWEENS

What a fun week it is…costumes, candy, and homes that take the Griswold approach to October. However, in St. Louis, it isn’t free candy...they have to earn it. That’s right, St. Louis has a tradition where kids have to tell a joke before receiving candy - more of a true “trick & treat.” Read the history of why here. So here's our attempt to add to the fun.