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The secret recipe at Angel Baked Cookies is prayer. Individually wrapped, the cookies or “halos” are available in a few locations, including Local Harvest and Maude’s Markets, SLU, Wash U, the North City Farmers’ Market, and the all-boys day school, St. Louis Priory School (which also happens to be our Dining Editor’s alma mater).
Founded in 2007 by Father Gary Meier, Angel Baked Cookies is one of two social enterprises of North Grand Neighborhood Services dedicated to empowering the area’s residents. While the second group, The Solomon Project, operates like Habitat for Humanity, Angel Baked employs city youth who make the chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar halos.
Students who wish to become “angels” must live in the city and be working toward a high school diploma, either in a traditional school setting or in a GED program. Both an application and interview are required as well, and Carla Jones, Program Manager, said they often choose students who don’t do well in the interview since they are the very ones who will benefit most from the experience.
Because students are involved in every part of the process—recipe development, taste analysis, shopping, production, clean up and sanitation, and sales and marketing—they learn vital skills along the way that prepare them for college and beyond. Workshops on resume writing, effective interviewing, and conflict resolution are also offered, and this fall, the students will have the opportunity to take digital photography classes with volunteers from UMSL.
Housed in the parish hall kitchen of Saints Teresa and Bridget Church, located at Grand and Market, Angel Baked Cookies shares a “mutually beneficial” relationship with the church, according to Jones. While the students have access to a large kitchen, the parish hall gets new industrial equipment, thanks to the enterprise’s grants. Back in 2007, Father Meier asked the area’s teens at a regular block unit meeting what they wanted. A safe place to go to after school and jobs close to home that didn’t require transportation were priorities for the teens.
Thus, Angel Baked Cookies was born and has been providing area youth with both that safe haven where they can talk about whatever they want and employment. During the school year, students work Monday through Thursday, from 3:30 to 6:30 PM. This fall will see the biggest group yet with 18 students. Many enter the program as sophomores (they need to be a minimum of 16 years old) and often stay until graduation. Even beyond graduation, they return to visit with Carla and the younger students, many of whom they mentored.
Angel Baked produces 1000 cookies a week, and last year, in the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they made 8000 halos. A typical batch of chocolate chip cookie dough yields 14 dozen cookies, which means the students have to be able to measure accurately large quantities of ingredients (like 7 pounds of flour for one batch). Accidents, naturally, happen: the day before our interview, students forgot to set the timer, and a whole batch (all 168 halos) was burned. Jones joked, “When we don’t pray hard enough, sometimes things go poorly,” after explaining that each shift begins with prayer and reflection. The cookies’ success relies not only on prayer but on tangibles like honey in the chocolate chip halos to keep them moist, and a process that involves ice cream scoops and precise “pressing” to ensure overall uniformity and avoid the dreaded “spread” that plagues even the most experienced baker.
Given the great story behind the halos, we’d buy them just to support the organization, even if their taste didn’t match the organization’s motives. But they’re good, and at about a dollar a piece, it’s easy to buy several at a time to share with others. They’ve even been used as wedding favors. The Priory boys are known to get “very excited” when they see the tell-tale boxes appear at the campus gift store, where the halos are sold only on Fridays. While we might envy those boys for their youthful high metabolisms, we don’t have to wait until Friday for our halos.
