How do you like your chocolate chip cookies? Soft and chewy or thin and crispy? In all my years of cookie baking, I’ve strived for thin and crispy with only moderate success. Granted, all homemade chocolate chip cookies are good when they’re warm from the oven (hello, gooey melty chocolate and buttery crumb). The true test, however, is after they’ve cooled.

All I can say is thank goodness for Tate’s Bake Shop®️. We always have a bag or two or three of their Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies in the house. In fact, we prefer them over their original Chocolate Chip. Thin and buttery with just the right crunch, they taste homemade.

I first “discovered” them after googling “Best Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies” about ten years ago. Tate’s was the hands down favorite, or else was included in the top five on most lists. So we tried a bag and have never looked back.

Though I vaguely knew there was a real Tate’s Bake Shop®️ somewhere in the Hamptons, and that an enterprising woman had developed the original recipe, I didn’t know she’d baked and sold cookies since childhood until I read Cookie Queen: How One Girl Started Tate’s Bake Shop®️ by Kathleen King and Lowey Bundy Sichol, illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki (Random House, 2023).

Just released in July, this inspiring true story describes how 11-year-old Kathleen King’s dream of creating a thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie turned into an enormous cookie empire.

We first learn that Kathleen had always loved to cook and especially enjoyed baking. Having grown up on a farm, she was usually up early every morning, fixed her own breakfast and made her own lunch for school. Sometimes she even cooked dinner for her brothers and sister when her parents had to work late.

One summer she and her father made a deal. If she baked cookies and sold them at their Long Island family farm stand every day, she’d get to keep all the money she earned to buy new school clothes. Though Kathleen was happy to do this, she was also on a mission to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie. She just knew she could do it.

With a discerning palate, lots of experimentation, and tireless determination, Kathleen baked endless batches of chocolate chip cookies — varying ingredients, measurements, and baking time until she landed on the secret to making the thin and crispy cookies she considered to be “the best cookie ever.” It was all about butter, more salted butter!

Now that she’d created the right recipe, how could she make sure her cookies would be the only cookies people would want to buy? She and her dad checked out the competition at other farm stands. Those cookies were all underwhelming: “small and puffy” or “soft and gooey.” Kathleen decided she wanted to make her cookies stand out by making them BIG.

So the next day she baked a batch the size of small plates. Her dad suggested she “give the customers a deal they can’t resist,” so they packed her cookies in quantities of six and sold them for 59 cents a bag.

Word soon spread; people came from far and near, from big cities and small towns to visit North Sea Farms, not only for fresh eggs and sweet fruit, but for Kathleen’s buttery-rich chocolate chip cookies. Kathleen had found something she loved to do, something she wanted to continue doing for a long time.

Kathleen baked cookies for the family farm stand for nine years. She made enough money to buy clothes for school every fall and a car the year she turned sixteen. After college at age 21, she opened her first bakery, Kathleen’s Bake Shop. Twenty years later, she started her first cookie company, Tate’s Bake Shop®️, named after her father. Today Tate’s Bake Shop®️ cookies are sold in grocery stores all over the country. Kathleen’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, in particular, have also won many “Best” awards.

Ramona Kaulitzki’s warm and appealing digital illustrations nicely complement the succinct text with depictions of the family farm as well as interior scenes showing Kathleen busy in the kitchen. Most pictures show father and daughter, with a few of other farm stand vendors and customers.

Safe to say, most young readers will be craving chocolate chip cookies throughout the story. They’ll be heartened by the message that kids are capable of starting successful businesses. If they already like Tate’s cookies, they’ll appreciate them even more, and if they haven’t yet tried them, they’ll certainly want to.

After reading a little more about Kathleen, I learned she’s now retired and still lives in North Sea, having sold her company to Mondolēz International (Chips Ahoy, Oreos) for $500 million in 2018.

After a successful 20 years running Kathleen’s Bake Shop, she experienced a major setback when a business partnership went awry. Lawsuits followed, and though Kathleen was able to retain the rights to her property, her partners had racked up a $600,000 debt. So she started again from scratch, paying off her share of the debt in three years, and then opened Tate’s Bake Shop®, which is still a popular destination for both locals and tourists today.

As for North Seas Farms, “A Small Farm with a Little Bit of Everything,” today it’s run by Kathleen’s brother Richie and his wife Robin. They specialize in chickens and produce (lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, melons), and also sell a variety of plants and flowers. And in case you’re wondering, yes, they do sell Tate’s Bake Shop® products. 🙂

Cookie Queen includes an Author’s Note and a recipe for Molasses Cookies, the first cookie Kathleen baked with her father.

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COOKIE QUEEN: How One Girl Started Tate’s Bake Shop®
written by Kathleen King and Lowey Bundy Sichol
illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki
published by Random House BFYR, July 2023
Picture Book Biography for ages 4-8, 40 pp.
*Includes Cookie Recipe

🍪 Visit the Tate’s Bake Shop® website to see their full variety of cookies (regular, gluten free, vegan), brownies, blondies, tea breads, etc.

🍪 Kathleen has also published two cookbooks: The Tate’s Bake Shop Cookbook (2005), and Tate’s Bake Shop: Baking for Friends (2012). I’ve been browsing through both and there are so many recipes I want to try!

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*Interior spreads text copyright © 2023 Kathleen King and Lowey Bundy Sichol, illustrations © 2023 Ramona Kaulitzki, published by Random House BFYR. All rights reserved.

**Copyright © 2023 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.