Mesquite Chocolate Chip Peanut Cookie

A delicious cookie and a pop-up debrief!

Hey everyone!

This post is a little behind schedule (I actually don’t keep any sort of schedule) but I needed a moment to process and live before I shared all the amazing details about my first pop up that took place at the end of March. I thought it might be interesting to break down some of the planning that took place in the weeks leading up to the day, how the pop up went, and then to share what I learned and where i’d like to go next!

The first time I attended a pop-up was the morning after moving to Berkeley in 2018. I had just arrived at my month-long sublet with two suitcases and not much of a plan besides searching for more permanent housing and a job. Luckily I had a connection through instagram that would turn into a dear friend that I would explore the vibrant food scene of the Bay Area for years to come. Hailey, who I had started messaging with a few months before my move, was excited to show me around and wanted to stop by and pick me up right away. I was hesitant but excited to meet up with a stranger from the internet in something called an “Uber” to go to something called a “pop-up”. I was definitely not in the middle of Michigan anymore.

Looking back, I don’t even remember what was served at that first pop-up (pupusas, maybe?) but it was the start to a long love affair with the format. Sidewalk pastry pop-ups near Dolores Park, tacos served from the small window of the back kitchen of an Italian restaurant, Filipino skewers served piping hot from the pedestrianized streets of covid-era San Francisco - pop-ups felt woven into the fabric of the bay by the time I arrived. An exciting and ever changing facet of the food scene, pop-ups served as an incubatory runway to develop ideas into future brick and mortars, a side hustle for passionate line cooks, or simply a way to share joy and nostalgia through cultural exchange, there were so many pop-ups but each one told a unique story.

I absorbed so many of these stories both consciously and subconsciously before I moved to NYC in 2023. In San Francisco, my time was spent working and learning full time in professional bakeries so the idea of having a pop up didn’t seem obvious but I realized last month how I had been secretly compiling thoughts on what I would do when it came my turn…

Menu - Deciding what I would make and then posting it to Instagram seemed like the point of no return. Up until that moment, folks could show up to the pastry pop-up and be (hopefully) surprised and pleased with whatever I had for sale. But as soon as you post a menu you have created very specific expectations. Someone might be making the trip just for one specific item. That self-applied pressure was actually really helpful as I shifted into production mode. I saw every item as equally important. Everything that I made had the potential to be someone’s favorite.

13 items plus granola 😅

For the actual menu creation, I pulled heavily from recipes that I’ve posted here over the last year. I wanted my little online community to have a chance to try some of things they’ve seen me post in person. Since my recipes are made for the home and not for a bakery, I needed to scale things like 8 inch round cakes to be baked in 13 inch long loaf pans so that I could get the maximum number of servings out of each round of baking. I also made sure that cookie recipes made at least 36 per batch, as much as would fit in my 5 qt. KitchenAid. You don’t often get taught this in bakeries but the math behind surface area and volume calculation is endlessly helpful to figuring out these sometimes tricky conversions.

Lastly, I wanted the menu to be approachable by a wide audience. I made sure there were some more “traditional” staples like olive oil cake, banana cake, and chocolate chip cookies while also offering some exciting and possibly “new” flavors for people to try like the gochujang cake, cilantro cake, and sweet potato buns. I also made sure to have a few gluten free items, dairy free items, and at least one vegan option. My goal was to turn no one away.

The Timeline - This is where my time in professional bakeries came in handy. At the beginning of the month, I made a list of prep that could be done weeks ahead, days ahead, and hours ahead. Candying fruit and making jam could be done weeks before as could mixing scones and cookies with the aide of my chest freezer.

The three days before the pop-up were all 9 hour work days. I spent time measuring out ingredients to mix the following day (what we call “mise-ing out”). I then baked the larger cakes, fed my starter and mixed the focaccia, and made all of the cake glazes and edible decor elements like sesame seed brittle. At the end of each day I would sit down to think through the timeline again. Adding additional items or crossing off tasks completed.

The morning of - There are many reasons why I reached out to KYO to see if they would be interested in hosting my first pop-up. They had recently opened and were already drawing sizable crowds on weekends, the owner was very kind and genuinely enthused about my ideas, and the cafe happens to be located a block and a half from me in Bed-Stuy. That last reason made the day of the pop-up SO much easier than it could have been had I chosen a location further away.

I woke up at 3:00am and started baking scones and cookies. I then decorated and sliced cakes, packing things in boxes as I went. Two lovely friends (hi Anthony and Sara) volunteered to meet at my place at 7:30am that morning to carry things over to the cafe. Even with three people and the use of a grocery cart, getting the nearly 300 pastries, packaging material, display signs, cake stand, and tablecloth over to KYO took two trips. Knowing that someone could easily run back to my apartment if I had forgotten anything was such a comforting feeling and when the morning was over and the exhaustion set in, carrying everything back home wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

Once I saw the flyer in the window at KYO, I knew the pop-up was really real.

The cafe opened at 8:00 and I nearly had all of the pastries set up and ready to go by the time the first few customers arrived. I was a bit of a shaky and sweaty mess for the first dozen or so transactions but my friends jumped in to help smooth out the rough edges and help me figure out a better flow of grabbing pastries, adding up the totals, and accepting payments more smoothly.

When a line formed, people didn’t seem to mind and I was able to tap into my FOH experiences to move people through as timely as I could while introducing myself and answering questions about the pastries. I had apprehensions during planning that I would spend most of my day repeating the same answers to “what is cilantro cake like?” “what is Calabrian chili?” “what is mesquite?” etc. but it turns out that the vast majority of customers were well informed and down to try something new, which has me excited to continue creating unique combinations and flavors.

By 10:30 I had sold out of all pastries and only had four packs of granola left. Around this time, several of my friends showed up and for the first time in the day I could leave my post at the table. It was great to walk around and take in the cafe full of people eating my pastries. Everyone was so happy and I felt like I was floating. It had all gone SO SO well. I hugged friends, gave away the last two granolas, and started to pack up the cart with empty crumb-littered trays.

Reflecting on the day, I was happy to have chosen a neighborhood spot where many of the customers were already regulars. The Bed Stuy community and the KYO community really showed up to support and I met so many of my neighbors for the first time. I’ve since seen many familiar faces out on walks or trips to the grocery store. There were also several followers from Instagram and folks from right here on Substack who made the trek for the first time from other neighborhoods. I’m happy my pop-up could inspire new folks to check out the area and support other businesses while here as well.

What I’ve learned - Whew. This section could be a post all on its own. But for brevity’s sake, I will try to condense this into lessons both small and large that I took away.

• Have your packaging situation organized before you leave the house. Using pastry boxes lined with paper? Pre-line them. The day will move much faster this way. Also, set aside some table space for you to pack and close boxes. It’s very difficult to do this midair.

• Write your pastry labels the night before. The morning of will be way too busy. Also, make sure you have your prices memorized or write down a little cheatsheet to keep close by. ( You won’t be able to read the signs if they’re facing the customer and not you. lol)

• I really wanted my first pop-up to create a big impression but maybe doing 14 unique pastries is a *bit* overdoing it when you’re a team of one. It’s okay to have a smaller menu but with increased quantities of each item. Keep in mind that each customer who enters is seeing the selection for the first time, 9 pastries are just as impressive as 14.

• Lean on your friends. When Anthony and Sara reached out to offer assistance, I almost told them I didn’t need the help. Wow, that would have been a colossal mistake. Having extra hands from smart and capable people made the pop-up the success that it was. It was comforting to have familiar faces around throughout the entire morning and my friend Jacob helping carry everything back home at the end was super sweet.

Where to now - This is largely TBD but there are future pop-ups around the corner. I’ve been bitten by the bug for sure. I enjoyed the sense of creative control that I haven’t felt in a long time and being able to bake for and interact with my community and friends was an experience I won’t forget. Stay tuned here and on Instagram for all the details as soon as i’m ready to announce them!

Huge shout out to everyone who sent me photos after the pop-up!

Today’s Recipe

Please don’t hate me for this but…i’m not a huge fan of chocolate. It’s nice sure but it’ll never be at the top of my list as a favorite flavor. Even as a kid I never quite understood the hold that it had on classmates. I never wanted a Hershey’s Bar, I was reaching for the gummy worms and Skittles.

To me, chocolate is a very strong flavor. (It actually makes me sneeze if it’s above 60%) It’s very assertive and is often all I can taste if i’m eating it in a pastry. If I do find a baked good with chocolate that I enjoy, it’s usually because the other ingredients present can stand up to the dominant notes of cocoa. For this recipe, I wanted to develop a cookie dough that was just as interesting (maybe even more) as the chocolate it held.

Mesquite flour (sometimes called powder) is made from a dried seed pod that grows in the southwestern United States. It has a smoky, slightly spiced flavor when used in baked goods but you’re likely more familiar with its presence in BBQ sauces and dry rubs. Here’s a great article about its sourcing, indigenous history, and the exciting applications that bakers across Texas are exploring with it.

A few notes…

• This cookie has roasted peanuts but feel free to swap those for pecans, walnuts, sunflower seeds, etc. I love the texture that a chopped nut can provide in a cookie but you can also substitute an equal amount of additional chocolate if you happen to be a really big chocolate fan.

• To develop the beautiful textural surface of wrinkle and folds, the butter and sugar need to be creamed together really well. The creaming stage introduces air pockets into the dough that will fill with steam and gas (from the baking soda) while baking. This makes the cookies puff dramatically in the oven and then deflate while cooling - creating crispy ridges and chewy valleys.

• A food styling trick that not only creates more rounded “visually appealing” cookies but also amplifies the textural contrast mentioned above is used here in step #6. If you’re not familiar with this technique,

  Edd Kimber
  has a cookie reel on Instagram that shows off the handy maneuver! If you skip this step, the cookies with be flatter and spread quite a bit, but they’ll still be delicious!

• The addition of milk powder amps up the flavor of the browned butter but isn’t necessary if you don’t have it. What “browns” in brown butter is the milk solids found in butter. The milk powder just adds more of these solids to brown in the melted butter. It’s like adding more browned butter without the introduction of more liquid fat that would affect texture.

Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookie (with Roasted Peanuts)