Albert Lea woman is known as the cookie lady

Published 2:00 pm Saturday, February 25, 2023

By Sarah Stultz

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Petersen uses artistic skills to create eye-catching cookies in growing business

Albert Lean Jill Petersen was set to retire as a longtime educator when she decided to explore things to do in the next phase of her life.

After watching some YouTube videos of people making cookies with royal icing and getting some supplies the previous Christmas, she and her daughter decided to give it a try.

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Petersen joked the result was bad at first, but she had so much fun doing it that she decided to keep it up.

Now, months later, she has perfected her craft, started a business, Kinda Kookie, which has grown so much that she has had to turn away orders as word of mouth continues to spread about her cookies — which many describe as works of art.

“I’ve always been an artist, but I’ve never found a medium I felt comfortable sharing my art,” Petersen said.

Petersen said she dedicates three eight- to 10-hour days for her cookies each week, including baking the cookies — which are typically vanilla almond flavored — on  Mondays and then decorating them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She limits herself to six dozen cookies a week because of the time it takes.

Petersen said with about half of her business, her customers will come to her with pictures of what they want her to create, but with the other half they leave it up to her to decide what to make.

Being that she makes the cookies in her own home, her typical day starts early at 4 or 5 a.m., usually before her husband, Clayton, wakes up. She tries to wrap up her work for the day before he comes home in the evening. She often utilizes her counter tops and much of the dining room table throughout the process.

Aside from the baking day — which Petersen said is her least favorite part of the process — what people may not realize is that it takes three different types of icings to create a cookie: one for outline, one for detail and one that fills or “floods” the majority of the top of the cookie. The longest part of the process is waiting for the flood layers of icing to dry before details can be added. She also incorporates air brushing on some cookies, as well as edible markers.

She said one of her favorite parts of the process is packaging the cookies when they are completed and preparing them to present to the customer.

In late December, she had everything from Christmas and other holiday cookies packaged on the table waiting for customers, to Harry Potter-themed cookies for a party and dinosaur-themed cookies for another celebration.

Petersen said she has always been known for being a little goofy, and the business name Kinda Kookie was a good play on words to have a little fun with that.

While she mostly takes orders, she has also done some pop-up sales at The Homestead Boutique, Whimzy and Good Shot Golf and Sporting Clays. She said she anticipates that this year for holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas she will mass produce several of the same cookies and sell them instead of taking personal orders.

She also offers paint-your-own cookies, where she draws an image on a cookie with an edible marker, and then an individual can paint the color onto the cookie.

Shari Sprague, executive director of the Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce, said she first became aware of Petersen’s cookies after Petersen attended a chamber Business After Hours event at Wedgewood Cove in 2021. Sprague said Petersen had given some beer mug cookies to a couple of her friends and she saw them and was impressed. Another person commented how they tasted good, too, so she looked up Petersen on Facebook and set up a meeting with her as soon as she could.

Sprague said she envisioned golf bouquets for the chamber’s Annual Golf Outing, a cookie bouquet auction to raise funds for Relay for Life, cookie bouquets for the chamber’s Annual Meeting and farm-themed bouquets as centerpieces for the Annual Ag Luncheon.

“Not only were the cookie bouquets for the Golf Outing and Relay absolutely beautiful, they raised a lot of money for the scholarship fund and cancer research,” Sprague said. “The bouquets she did for the Annual Meeting brought me to tears. They were beyond my expectations, even more special and beautiful than I had envisioned.”

Petersen said she loves seeing how much her customers like the cookies, and is humored when people want to hold on to them.

“It’s funny I know several people who have cookies on their bulletin boards or in their kitchens,” she said. “I’m like that’s gross, I gave you those cookies six months ago.

But they’re so pretty they don’t want to eat them.”

Petersen said her favorite part of her new business and hobby is the people she meets.

“I’ve been invited out to Washington to attend a rodeo because of a box of cookies,” she said. “I met Marion Ross because of cookies. Several times I’ve been out in public and someone I don’t know approaches me with, ‘Hey, aren’t you the cookie lady?’ It’s been a great avenue for meeting people, and my life has been enriched by it.”

She said a friend recently pointed out all the fun things that have happened to her since she started the cookies.

“She said, ‘You could title this current chapter of your life The Power of the Cookie,’” her friend said. “It’s so true. The rewards have been sweeter than a sugar cookie.”

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