Grammy K’s Turns Passion Into Big Profit With Cookies

Business and Technology:

The aroma of peanut butter fills a small shop at the Spruce Creek Fly-In, across from a runway where Kathy Blackman is baking cookies.

But these aren’t just any cookies. They’re Grammy K’s Monster Cookies.

The recipe for the dessert plate-sized sweets was created more than 30 years ago by Blackman, when she was a young mom, and a Pennsylvania girlfriend of hers. Over the years, the pair baked the treats for fun — their children’s birthdays, holidays and family get-togethers.

Not until last year did Blackman start baking the sweets for profit, with her girlfriend’s blessing.

“It’s about six inches — with peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips and raisins, but no flour — gluten free. The peanut butter holds it together,” said Blackman, 54, about her sweet creations. “Whenever I was doing anything or going anywhere, people would say, bring your monster cookies.”

She used to bake them patiently — in batches of five-at-a-time.

But last year, when Blackman started baking her monster cookies for sale, she was doing it at home, around the clock — up to 500 a day — until she burned up her oven.

That’s when she bought a new oven and moved into the Fly-In shop. Now she’s going to begin using an industrial-sized baking oven, which can bake dozens of the monster cookies at a time.

“It’s time for her to start working smarter,” said her son Mark Blackman, 31, a pilot living in Ponce Inlet — whom Mom credits with the idea of going commercial with the cookies.

Mark has been noshing on his mom’s monster cookies since he was a child.

Photo from Stock.xchng.