Sasquatch cookies (Image: Jane Hess)
Jane Hess’ Creative Cookie Creations almost look too good to eat – almost.
Hess had been baking her whole life, taking cake decorating courses and making wedding cakes and other baked goods in the past. In 2016, the Quispamsis baker chose to showcase her skills.
“I decided that I was going to do something different, and for all my friends and family I was going to make them Christmas cookies and surprise them,” Hess said. “I started decorating cookies and it just took me days-and-days-and-days.”
Hess believed she could only make that many cookies at Christmastime, but everyone’s positive reaction coupled with the growing list of people who wanted them over four years suggested otherwise.
Lobster cookies (Image: Jane Hess)
With Hess’ husband approaching retirement and wanting to help pay some bills and save for future plans, she brushed up on baking and icing techniques and began looking into selling her cookies at local markets.
“At Christmastime I made 300 cookies,” Hess said. “That was a three-week process, that for one week I bake the cookies and then 10-15 hour days to decorate all those cookies.”
Hess has since sold her cookies at the Grand Bay-Westfield and Regional Hospital’s market. She opened a stall at the Saint John Night Market last year and will return when it re-opens this year. She also sold cookies on the first night of Uptown Sparkles and at the Hospital’s Christmas market and plans to return to both events.
Hess takes her orders online on Creative Cookie Creations’ Facebook page. The cookie flavors she offers are vast, among them maple, ginger and chocolate mint.
“It’s interesting because when I’m taking these orders I say to them, ‘Which flavor would you like?’ and you know what they all say: Vanilla!,” Hess said.
Single cookies are $2.50 apiece, with specialized single cookies $3.50 apiece.
Hess charges $30.00 for specialized orders because they are made separately from her usual batches.
Creative Cookie Creations’ stall at the Night Market (Image: Jane Hess)
The cookies are made with no artificial ingredients or preservatives and she does not use artificial flavoring. “I use oils, candy oils, which is the direct oil from whatever fruit or almond or anything. If I can’t get that I use emulsions; emulsions won’t lose their flavor when the cookie, they help the cookie maintain flavor,” Hess explained.
While Hess bakes the cookies herself, her friend Dorothy Howard helps her at her stall to sell the delicious treats. “She brings them in, she brings the people in to see the cookies, she is a perfect salesman,” said Hess. “Having somebody who can speak up is a big deal; I don’t know if I would have sold as many cookies as I did had she not been there.”
Her Creative Cookie Creations stall did good business at the Night Market from May to December in 2019. However, she has no plans to expand her baking beyond cookies in the future.
“My husband is getting close to retirement and, you know, we have a few plans,” she added. “I’d like to like to maybe travel a little bit and doing this is helping to fund that that dream. That’s part of why I’m doing it, I’ve got a goal in mind and so I’m just not only am I enjoying it, but I’m putting the money towards something I really want.”
Hess has sold cookies of all shapes and sizes, from Sasquatches to lobsters and unicorns, with many young people coming to her stall.
“Pizza slice” cookies (Image: Jane Hess)
“I had a couple really funny experiences with people who bought pizzas,” Hess said, “They’re quite large slices say, so they would say, ‘Okay, I’m going to take this home I’m going to have it for breakfast, lunch tomorrow.’” Then the customer would slink back guiltily to her stall ten minutes later to buy a replacement for the cookie they gobbled down.
It is stories like these that made her feel the people of Saint John really appreciate her wares.
“I’ve always loved Saint John, I’ve always loved the people of Saint John myself personally; I just think they’re all great,” said Hess.
