March's Cookie of The Month is a cool collaboration we did with Grand Ten Distilling It's actually something we did last summer, but it's an awesome reminder of why I absolutely love what I do.
One SoWa Sunday, I was sitting in my tent ready to sell cookies to the next visitor who stopped by. This lovely lady came to my table to tell me how much Julie Kramer from Radio BDC loved me. I smiled. Julie has shown me (and a lot of small business owners) so much love. It always makes me really happy, Julie is so kind and sincere and meeting her for the first time was a thrill as I loved her on WFNX and she was instantly excited and supportive of Top Shelf Cookies. Mallory introduced herself and she worked with Grand Ten Distilling and wanted to know if we'd like to do a pop up over there. Emails were exchanged and eventually, she invited us to their 1-year anniversary party. She wanted to know if we could create a cookie with their spirits. Looking at the calendar, I told her I would come by and see what I could come up with.
I enlisted the help of my good friend Seth and we headed to Southie and pulled up to the bar. We started trying spirits with the help of Steve and Brynn. I'm not going to lie, things got a little fuzzy that afternoon, however, I will tell you this - we had a good time. Also, I remember how much I enjoyed Steve and Brynn telling us about the spirits, how they were made, what they were good in, etc. I know how jazzed I get to tell all of you how I find ingredients or how we brown the butter in PB Toffee and how it makes it extra special.
Seth is a former restaurant chef and he's become a great friend and mentor to me. While we enjoyed our cocktails, we ended up decided that one cookie wouldn't be enough. We would need to make a FLIGHT of cocktail cookies with GrandTen's amazing spirits. It was a LOT of fun to develop those recipes. I wanted to really use Grand Ten's spirits in the best way possible. We gave them all fun Southie inspired names too. I had so much fun doing that.
The one that was the clear winner was the Castle Island Chocolate. We took a nice cocoa blended base cookie, fed it some of Grand Ten's South Boston Irish Whiskey and added some sliced almonds. That was very well received, we brought it to markets that week and people seemed to really enjoy it. With St. Patrick's Day in March, we've always highlighted the Short & Stout cookie made with Guinness, I thought (hoped) this would be a nice spin on the traditional favorite. Also, COTM members will be getting a very cool recipe card from our friends at Grand Ten Distilling included in their package, because they are so cool!
If you haven't visited Grand Ten Distilling, I highly recommend it. The cocktails are really great without being pretentious. The staff is passionate and knowledgeable about what they do. I always enjoy my visits there and I think you will too.
If you want to come visit us there, you can on April 13th. We are excited to join them again for a pop-up. We'll be bringing the Castle Island Chocolate along with some other fun Boston Inspired flavors as we celebrate ALL the Boston things in April.
Enjoy!
Heather