The story behind the cookies

Every small town has a few things it’s known for. In the little Illinois town where Bethany grew up, one of them was her mother’s cookies.

Bethany’s dad pastored the local church, and her mom — nicknamed “Honey” — baked for every gathering the congregation held. Potlucks, funerals, Sunday coffee hours, it didn’t matter the occasion. What started as a simple recipe turned into something the whole community talked about. People showed up early just to make sure there’d still be some left. Over the years, through countless Saturday afternoons in that kitchen, Honey worked the recipe until it was exactly right — rich, a little decadent, the kind of cookie you remember.

Bethany learned it standing right next to her. Rain, shine, or the rare Illinois heatwave, Saturday afternoons meant baking with Mom, and that never changed. It wasn’t really a lesson. It was just what Saturdays were.

Years later, life brought Bethany all the way out to Half Moon Bay — a small coastal town on the Northern California coast that couldn’t feel more different from where she started. But the recipe came with her, unchanged. She started baking for friends, then for her own church community here, and the reaction was the same one her mom used to get back home. People asking for the recipe. People asking if there were more.

Copper Cookie Co is that same recipe — Honey’s recipe — made the same way it’s always been made. Nothing modernized, nothing simplified. Just a family recipe that earned its reputation the old-fashioned way, one Saturday at a time, now baked fresh for a new town to fall in love with.

— Bethany, Half Moon Bay