Dallas – If you even find yourself in Northhaven Park in north Dallas and you happen to get whiff of the heavenly smell of hot fresh cookies, chances are you close to Monek Smith’s house.
“I could talk about cookies all day long,” said Monek Smith. Monek is one smart cookie. She majored in construction at Texas A&M and has designed and created some incredible homes and buildings but today she has a different title. “CEO of Smith Enterprises,” joked Monek.
“People ask what I do and I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m a stay-at-home mom.’ And then if I’m with somebody else, they might say, ‘But you make cookies.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, yes, I make cookies.’ I’m not the mom that makes chocolate chip cookies when my kids come home from school. When my kids go to school, then I go to work, and I make cookies for other people,” explained Monek.
Known as MS Cookie, Monek makes cookie gifts for all her kooky friends but these aren’t classic cookies she’s cranking out, these cookies are much classier. “Who knew that construction and cookie making go together so well,” joked Monek.
It’s going to be hard to eat a work of art!
“Well, I had for years been looking for a side hustle. I like to be creative. I like to do things. I like to have an activity. I’m not just a ‘sit at home and play with the kids’ kind of thing. I wanted to create something,” explained Monek. “There are hundreds of cookiers out there, thousands of cookiers out there, and I never expected it to be what it is now. There’s a word for us. We are cookiers,” stated Monek.
“One cookie can take 30 minutes, it can take two hours. Like I said, it’s building. And so, it can take a course of days,” said Monek. “For The Texas Bucket List, you have to have Texas cookies, right? All the greatest things in Texas. Some of mine too, obviously I’m an Aggie so my heart is with A&M cookie,” said Monek.
And we just had to know if this Aggie has ever had to do any Longhorn cookies! “I have. And when they ordered these cookies, I told them that it was a true testament to how much I loved cookies that I would make Longhorn cookies. And so, I’ve done it two or three times, but I don’t advertise that very often,” expressed Monek.
Monek’s Texas themed cookies are so cool that she actually took home a blue ribbon for them at the State Fair of Texas.“I won. I was shocked. I was shocked,” stated Monek.
So how hard could it be to make cookies? Well, I crumbled to the pressure. The Texas Bucket List, live in the kitchen! “Ready to decorate a cookie? All right. So you’ve got two consistencies, this is going to be your outline, that’s what you’re going to fill it in with. I gave you the Texas shape because it’s easy to outline. There’s not very many straight lines,” explained Monek while we attempted the art of decorating. “A cookie can look good, but if it doesn’t taste good, what’s the point,” expressed Monek.
“It’s so fun to know that you are putting a smile on somebody else’s face with something as simple as a cookie,” stated Monek.