Made By Humans, For Humans

Hello and welcome to our BTS segment. And with that we don’t mean the iconic K-Pop band – deeply sorry if that lets anyone down – but behind-the-scenes of our little edible flower magic operation over here in Los Angeles. So come on in, won’t you? Stay awhile.

Sometimes we joke about robotic arms that could press flowers onto cookies. “If only,” we wonder. How much more productive could we be? How many more cookies could we create in a single day? Certainly many more than our human hands can muster. But what would we lose in the process? As business grows – for which we’re so grateful (!!) – we find ourselves thinking a lot about scale. We’re constantly asking ourselves how we can become more efficient, in order to handle a higher number of orders. While many of our conversations lately revolve around moving “faster,” we also realize that there are many things we simply won’t be able to speed up.

THE REVELATION…

We take pride in the care we put into each and every cookie, cake or cocktail cube. Our uber-talented (and very-human) bakers flex their artistic muscles mixing and matching petals and greenery to create custom designs like calendula “sunbursts” or micro thyme-framed bachelor button buds. No two products are exactly alike, and we like it that way. And while sometimes, we fantasize about getting ahead, stocking up so we’re ready for anything – any order, big or small – ultimately, we don’t want to sacrifice the freshness and made-to-order quality of our products. Y’all are special to us, dear readers. You deserve special cookies to match.  

THE HUMANS

While we’ve offered plenty of praise to Mother (nature), for all she’s given to us, we want to take a moment to practice some self-love for our team. Our small-but-mighty squad is as hand selected as the flowers we choose for each cookie. For us, it’s not about having the most people but the best people, the most artistic visionaries, the most food-obsessed kitchen masters, and gentle-handed packagers with only the best music taste (just kidding, but good tunes are integral to busy packing days). 

FLOWER PRESSED SHORTBREAD COOKIES

For our signature flower pressed shortbread cookies, we harvest our art supplies (read: fresh flowers) from Loria’s carefully crafted edible garden, and on busy weeks we supplement from local farms like Fresh Origins. For any watercolor painters out there, you know about the essential first “wash” to prep the canvas with moisture. In our studio, it’s not so different. Our pastry chef extraordinaires paint each batch of shortbread cookies with water before carefully adhering petals, leaves and stems to construct a diverse and vibrant garden of designs onto each cookie:  

After completing each sheet of delicate and unique pieces, our bakers gently press the artwork into place with protective parchment paper and a rolling pin. Decorated cookies are then baked to perfection and to order – we never make more than what we sell, so nothing goes to waste. 

PRESSED FLOWERS

We’ve heard about shortcuts when it comes to pressing flowers. We’ve even read about a way to quickly dehydrate flowers using a microwave, creating results in hours. But you know what they say: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Okay, so maybe comparing our edible flower packs and pressed flower cakes to an ancient city as beautiful as Rome could be considered “over-hyping,” but we think the message here is that good things take time. We use our wooden presses and commit to waiting it out – between two to three weeks – for the best, most natural results. We take care to use flowers with less moisture to avoid molding, and we swap out the parchment every so often to prevent browning.

We know that when we decorate our cakes, we find richness in a floral color palette and diversity of texture. That’s why with every pack of edible pressed flowers we put together, we imagine how it will look in your kitchen when it arrives. With a gentle hand, we construct layered, vibrant pressed bouquets to inspire your next cake.

THE LIFE OF AN ORDER

As mentioned, we’re not into excess – unless we’re talking about deliciousness – so from the time we receive an order number to the time we ship a package, there’s quite a coordination dance that happens at the bakery. Our team conducts a final count of orders at our weekly “cutoff” time, Mondays at 10:00 AM Pacific. And then – we get busy. We bake our counted cookies then and there, so they are fresh for a Tuesday send-off. Our shipping team gently pairs and bags cookies, taking care to: 

1. Protect the bakers’ botanical designs.
2. Create a diverse selection of color and patterns for boxing.
3. Conduct a “change of the guard” when handling gluten free and/or vegan products, eliminating any risk of cross-contamination i.e. through gloves and surfaces. 

We treat our orders like our products – each one unique, with its own needs. We hand select colorful notecards to fit each handwritten message – after “aw”-ing at the sentiments, of course – and cross-check a package’s contents two, three times before affixing its shipping label. The end of a package’s journey with us is when we hand it off to our friends at UPS and USPS (to which we are known as the “cookie girls") and wave goodbye, wishing it a safe and prompt journey. 

*Speaking of promptness, here are some hot tips we’ve learned along the way with shipping. While in California, ground shipping with UPS could take as little as 1-2 business days, the number grows to 4-7 days in other states, depending on where you’re at! For special timing needs such as weddings, birthdays or special events, we always recommend one of the priority shipping options for an ensured delivery date – instead of a window or approximation. But if you ever have any questions, just reach out! Once again, our customer service is not a robot or automated response, it’s our onsite team that handles operations on a regular basis, so we can give you the very best service. 

So as much as we appreciate the growth we’re experiencing, we also appreciate there are things that won’t change much about our process. And that’s okay. The delicate nature of flowers and the human care required to work with them – as imperfect and gradual as it may be – is a part of what makes us, us. We look forward to baking for you and for us all to relish in #flowerpower