Cookie Kingdom

TJ Coleman builds a cookie empire from home

By Stacy Moser | Photos by JUSTIN BORJA

TJ Coleman has a lot for which to be grateful. Behind her confident smile and quiet demeanor is a young woman who’s been through a lot.

In 2013, when she was only 31 years old and had just given birth to her fourth child, she was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “I literally fell to my knees when I found out,” she remembers. “I felt the room spinning and I got tunnel vision. I don’t even remember the conversation with my doctor. Later, I called my mom, crying, and said, ‘You have to call my doctor. You have to listen to her for me, because I can’t process this.’”

TJ looks back at the ensuing months after her diagnosis and recalls the despair she felt as she began treatment. “I didn’t want my kids and my husband feeling sorry for me,” she says. “I was secretly hating every minute of chemotherapy, but I had to live life like I wasn’t scared. I found that it was more difficult mentally than physically. I’d think, ‘How am I going to get through this? How am I going to be okay?’”

She persevered through her darkest days by reminding herself that her kids needed her. After enduring six months of chemotherapy, TJ’s doctors told her she could return to normal life as a wife and mother. “I can talk about it now, but it’s still very raw,” she acknowledges. “I had to be tested constantly to make sure I’m okay. So this fall I had a PET scan—it tells you if cancer is still in your body—and it showed there was none in mine,” she says, smiling. “You’re considered cancer-free once you’ve had no sign of it for five years.”

Not long after her brush with cancer, TJ and her husband, Jonathan, moved to West Temple into what she calls their “forever home.” The couple became parents to their fifth child (the only brother to his four sisters) and Jonathan took a job as a paramedic in Austin.

As TJ settled into the healthy rhythm of day-to-day life raising children, she found herself drawn to the kitchen—the oven in particular—spending time baking cookies for friends and family. “Decorating each cookie was so cathartic to me and I loved having a little time to myself in the kitchen,” she says.

“I began with a small box of cookie cutters and a few decorating essentials. Now I have a cookie studio in my home with thousands of cutters, the best cookie equipment and even a 3-D printer so I can make even more cutters.”

Jonathan learned to use the printer’s software and creates cutters inspired by her boundless imagination.

With Jonathan’s encouragement, TJ began to market her sweet treats, calling her business True Cookie Company.

“Starting a cookie business made me really put myself out there,” she says. “I’m pretty introverted, so it was scary. It’s one thing to bake something, but it’s another thing altogether when people are paying you. Making this my life was something I knew I had to do. I absolutely think that cancer happened to me for a reason,” she says of her motivation to make a success of her enterprise. “I decided this was my life’s do-over after cancer.”

TJ creates custom cookies for birthday parties, showers, weddings and even business meetings. She revels in creating intricate designs for her cookies, especially when her client gives her plenty of creative freedom. “The most unusual cookies I ever created were for a soldier who lost his leg in Afghanistan. He wanted cookies for a celebration that he survived. I created cookies in the shape of a man without a leg and he loved them. Another client had just finished parole and he threw a party to celebrate,” she laughs as she describes the cookies she made. “The frosting was black and they had a little man in an orange jumpsuit with white lettering saying ‘Straight Outta Probation’ on top.”

Recently, TJ began to share her expertise with students in cookie-decorating classes and at parties. “I teach people, step by step, how to decorate cookies. Today, cookie decorating is so popular and it’s very exciting to be a part of something so special. My goal is to open a small bakery some day and make yummy baked goods. But for now, being home to raise my kids and run a home bakery works for us,” she says. “The feeling I get when someone comes to the door and I show them their cookies and they tell me how much they like them—it feels so good. My heart goes into those cookies. Making someone else’s day better because of something I baked is the best.”

True Cookie Co. | Facebook.com/TrueCookies/

TJ’s Tips for Better Baking

1. To keep cookie dough from drying out, never flour your surface. Roll out cookies on a nonstick silicon mat or parchment paper.
2. If your cookies spread too much, omit baking powder from the dough recipe.
3. Always use warm water in royal icing to eliminate air bubbles.
4. When making dark-colored icing, like red, black, navy blue or brown, tint the icing the night before and let it sit overnight to darken.
5. Always use room-temperature butter and eggs.

When asked what her favorite holiday cookie is, TJ answers emphatically that it’s a Cheese Delco. “It’s the only cookie my mom made at Christmastime. If it was my last cookie meal on the planet, that’s what I would eat.”

Apricot Cheese Delcos
Makes 4 dozen

Ingredients:
8 ounces cream cheese (room temperature)
12 ounces butter (room temperature)
3 cups all-purpose flour
Jar of apricot preserves
Powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl, cream together cream cheese and butter. Then add flour, 1 cup at a time. Place dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. Roll out dough, ¼-inch thick, on silicone mat or parchment paper. (If sticky, add a small amount of powdered sugar.) Cut dough into 2-inch squares using a cookie cutter with scalloped edges. Place 1 teaspoon apricot filling in the center of the cookie and press together 2 opposite corners. Bake 15 minutes or until the corners turn slightly brown.