Meet the Blogger

Meet the Baker Behind the Blog

Hi, I’m JJ — and if you’ve found your way here, there’s a decent chance we already have something in common.

I’ve been working behind the scene at Cocoa Cookie Bar for the past couple of years, and somewhere in between developing new flavors, sourcing ingredients, and figuring out what it actually means to build an artisan cookie business from the ground up, I’ve been quietly accumulating something else: thoughts. A lot of them. About cookies, about baking, about flavor, about food culture, about the extraordinary history of a baked good that can quietly slip past even the most curious eaters.

I’ve always been a reader and a writer. The blog was always coming. It just needed the right moment — and apparently, that moment is now. Hey y’all.

The Question I Get Asked Most

Did you go to pastry school?

Not exactly. I majored in Biology, which taught me more about baking than one might expect — because baking, at its core, is applied science. The Maillard reaction, gluten development, the behavior of leavening agents under heat, the way fat interacts with sugar at a molecular level — these are not mysteries to someone who spent years studying how things work at a cellular level. Lab instincts and kitchen instincts turned out to be more compatible than I would have predicted, and somewhere in that overlap is where Cocoa Cookie Bar was born.

What didn’t come from a classroom came from a more demanding school entirely: eating.

My Quasi Pastry School

I have a mad sweet tooth, I bake constantly, and I have never once turned down a side quest — especially one that ends in a cookie. So instead of sitting in a pastry classroom learning what great cookies were supposed to taste like, I went out and tasted them. All over Houston. All over the United States. Hundreds of them, from hole-in-the-wall bakeries to destination shops with lines around the block, in cities where cookie culture is taken seriously as a craft.

Some of the most notable stops on that ongoing education include:

Florida — Gideon’s Bakehouse, Night Owl Cookies, and The Cookie Bar at Summer House on the Lake.

New York — Levain Bakery, the shop frequently credited with launching the modern gourmet cookie era, producing six-ounce cookies that have no business being as good as they are — and yet they are. Also Haní’s, Culture Espresso, Gooey on the Inside, Funny Face Bakery, Maman, La Mercerie, L’Appartement 4F, L.A. Burdick, Chip City, Pastry Box, Red Gate Bakery, From Lucie, Prospect Butcher & Co., Schmackary’s, Báhn by Lauren, Jacques Torres, Seven Grams Caffè, and Last Crumb.

Los Angeles — Paderia.

Nashville — Christie’s.

Atlanta — Ali’s Cookies.

Dallas — Kessler Bakeshop and Cookie Society.

Philadelphia — Famous 4th Street Cookie Company.

And many more still on the must-try list — because this particular side quest has no clear ending, and I am entirely at peace with that.

Why Any of This Matters

Eating this broadly and this intentionally produced something that no single recipe book or pastry program could have: a comparative experience for what great cookies actually are. Not in theory. In practice. Across dozens of cities, dozens of styles, and dozens of philosophies about what a cookie should be, do, and taste like.

That experience is what Cocoa Cookie Bar is built on. And it is what this blog is going to be built on — because the goal here is not to tell anyone what to bake. It is to share a genuine love of cookies: where they come from, why they taste the way they do, and what makes the difference between a cookie that is good and one that stops you mid-sentence.

If that’s your jam, you’re in the right place.

Thanks for stopping by and giving this blog a look. It’s going to be a good one.

— JJ

Cocoa Cookie Bar — 11138 Westheimer Rd, Houston TX 77042 | Tue–Sat 11am–6:30pm | Nationwide Cookie Shipping Available
Houston’s Elevated Artisan Traditional & Alcohol Infused Cookies, Ice Creams & Drinks