Our Story {tbt}

This is the story of a 3rd generation Chicago entrepreneur. 

Chocolate chip cookie. So simple, yet excruciatingly frustrating. 

Have you ever noticed that all recipes use the same exact ingredients?  It’s the tweaking and creativity which sets them all apart.

Continuously searching for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Old cookbooks, family recipes and bloggers are a wealth of information. Everyone has an opinion; everyone has their perfect chocolate chip cookie.

I’ve had some bad chocolate chip cookies in my day –stale little nuggets, cookies oozing with stuff that probably shouldn’t be in a cookie, or so raw I was sure botulism was lurking.

Growing up baking alongside my mother and grandmother: coffee cake, jelly cookies and banana bread were my “go to.”  Although baking was a passion, I followed a different creative career path.  

Not having plan after Tulane graduation, my parents encouraged me to explore expanding the business I started in high school.

I took some of those hair barrettes into Elements Chicago. The owner, Toby Glickman, was (still is) a savvy businesswoman with exquisite taste. Not one to mince words, Toby said "These are great but...you've got to make jewelry and you've got to get a sales rep in New York."

With names written in my red assignment notebook, barrettes glued into jewelry I flew to NYC.  I was rejected by several of the industry’s leading accessory showrooms.  The last appointment of the day said yes. The woman was opening a new showroom, she might have felt sorry for me or maybe she was desperate for designers?

Linda Levinson Designs, LLC was born in August 1987. Big, bulky, shoulder duster, green patina, chunky rhinestone costume jewelry was hot hot hot in the 80's, 90's and even into 2000.  Rhode Island was the costume jewelry capitol.

After 25 years of designing and manufacturing jewelry in Chicago & Rhode Island, along came India and China with less expensive raw materials & labor.  Determined to keep manufacturing in the USA, it was impossible to compete against myself. That was the beginning of the end of Linda Levinson Designs.

You may be wondering: "Where is this woman going with this long story about jewelry?"

When LLD closed in 2015, my creativity turned to cookies. Hundreds of batches, tastings, failures,1000’s of calories consumed and big.fat.cookie was born.  

Big.fat.cookies are made in very small batches with the greatest attention to every single detail, with the same craftsmanship, enthusiasm and creativity brought to my jewelry since 1986. 

We hand form and weigh each dough ball (I CANNOT stand the look of scooped balls) adding individual chocolate chips to make sure the finished product is the correct weight and looks perfect. After baking, each cookie is individually wrapped and marked by hand with the flavor on the back.

These cookies are Chicago born and baked.

We recommend warming room temperature cookies @350 degrees 5-8 minutes for a melty chocolate inside, crispy outside.

Enjoy your cookies, we certainly enjoyed creating them!

XOXO

big.fat.cookie

Chicago, make no small cookies