About

Hi, I’m Nicolette — Welcome to My Corner of the Cookie World

Hi! I’m Nicolette Tallmadge, the baker behind Mae Mae’s Morsels. I live in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with my husband, my mom, and our two dogs, Noah and Toby.

My cookie story started a long, long time ago with a gingerbread sleigh. Actually, it started with the Better Homes and Gardens Christmas edition. Even as a teenager, I liked leafing through Better Homes and Gardens and I especially loved the holiday editions. One year, a recipe caught my eye: how to make a gingerbread sleigh filled with cookies. I thought, Hey, that would be a cool thing to make for Christmas. Never mind that fact that at that point, I never really baked anything before.

Well…I never made the sleigh.

But I did make some pretty decent gingerbread cookies. And apparently, that was enough to get things started.

It Started With Christmas

For most of my life, baking cookies has revolved around my favorite holiday: Christmas.

Every year, out came the cookie sheets, cookie scoops, flour, eggs, and butter (along with the holiday edition of whatever magazine caught my eye that year). I’d try new recipes, revisit old favorites, and attempt to make each batch just a little better than the one before it.

Those original gingerbread cookies stuck around because my uncle loved them—and so did my mom. Eventually, chocolate chip cookies joined the lineup, followed by lemon cookies and, of course, decorated sugar cookies. The sugar-cookie decorating started out rough, but got better over the years. Thankfully.

Then came the cookie that changed everything:

The Brookie.

Part chocolate chip cookie, part brownie, the Brookie quickly became a family favorite. Over the years, I kept tinkering with it, especially the brownie side, until I reached the point where family and friends were fighting over who got the last one.

That’s usually a sign that you’re onto something.

Then I Started Experimenting

Once I started tinkering, it was hard to stop.

My husband once brought me home a giant black-and-white cookie after a trip to New York. I fell in love with it and naturally decided I needed to figure out how to make my own version. So I experimented. And tweaked. And baked some more. And tweaked some more.

Before long, Christmas baking had become a full-fledged family tradition, with different cookies developing their own fan clubs.

My husband’s favorite is Oatmeal Raisin.

The family favorite is still the Brookie.

I’ve made White Chocolate Macadamia for my African violet group, Lemon Cookies for coworkers, and Molasses Cookies which is my under the radar favorite have earned their own place in the rotation.

And then there’s my niece and nephew.

My nephew is firmly on Team Brookie and really isn’t all that impressed with the oatmeal raisin cookies. My niece loves the sugar cookies. She despises my lemon cookies.

To be fair, it isn’t really the cookie’s fault. She just really, really hates lemon.

And that’s something all those years of baking have taught me:

Not everyone’s taste buds are the same.

But I love trying to find that cookie that makes someone’s taste buds sing.

The Great British Baking Show May Be Partly Responsible

My baking really took off after I discovered The Great British Baking Show.

Seriously.

I started watching it while I baked, picked up all sorts of interesting tips, and became even more curious about why things worked—or didn’t work—in the kitchen. I still put it on as part of my holiday baking ritual, mostly as background noise while I’m mixing, melting chocolate and pulling hot cookies out of the oven.

Eventually, my Christmas ritual expanded beyond family. I started baking for coworkers, sometimes creating displays filled with different kinds of cookies I’d discovered and experimented with. Occasionally, I’d take requests. Someone requested Cowboy Cookies one year and I gave them a try.

They were fantastic.

I also started shipping Christmas cookies to remote coworkers and family members around the country—as far away as Minnesota and California. I’d bake everything, package it up, and carefully time the shipping so the cookies would arrive for Christmas. It became a whole operation.

And the more I baked, the more I learned.

“You Should Sell These.”

Eventually, I started hearing the same thing over and over:

“You should sell your cookies.”

And I mostly laughed it off.

I already had a full-time job. I was growing and selling African violets—another hobby I somehow fell into—and making and selling jewelry, which was another creative hobby I’d had for years. When exactly was I supposed to start a cookie business?

So I used to joke:

“If I ever lose my job, I’ll take that as my sign that I’m supposed to start selling cookies.”

Apparently, I said it often enough for the universe to respond:

Okay. Go ahead and do that.

And suddenly, that crazy cookie-business idea didn’t seem quite so crazy anymore. My mother and my husband were more than ready. In fact, my husband had already picked out the name.

So, Who Is Mae Mae?

My niece and nephew call me Auntie Mae Mae (another nickname dreamed up by my husband. Nicknames are apparently one of his superpowers).

Every Christmas, they’d talk about Auntie Mae Mae’s cookies—which they hoped I was planning to make, which ones they loved, and, as you’ve already learned, which lemon-flavored ones they most definitely did not want. So, when my husband suggested Mae Mae’s Morsels, it just fit, because this business isn’t something I dreamed up overnight.

It’s the result of years of Christmas cookie trays, family favorites, coworkers making requests, boxes shipped across the country, recipes covered in notes, countless experiments, and people arguing over the last Brookie or just sneakily stuffing a handful in their bag reserved for leftovers.

And now I get to share those cookies with you.

Welcome to Mae Mae’s Morsels

I’m still experimenting.

I’m still tweaking.

And I’m definitely still baking….in fact much more than ever.

Here, I’ll be sharing some of that journey—the ingredients I’m experimenting with, what happens behind the scenes, new flavors I’m developing, where Mae Mae’s will be popping up next, and probably a few baking experiments that don’t go quite according to plan. Because not all bakes come out perfectly…but those are often the ones that are the most interesting.

If you’d like to follow along, I’d love for you to join Mae Mae’s VIP List. That’s where you’ll hear about upcoming cookie drops, new and experimental flavors, local events, and whatever else is baking at Mae Mae’s.

And every now and then, there may even be a little treat in it for you.

Thanks for finding your way to my little corner of the cookie world. I hope you’ll come back soon.

Nicolette
Founder & Baker in Chief
Mae Mae’s Morsels
Worth Every Bite.