Mother and daughter turn passion project into cookie business

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A mother and daughter from Montgomery County, Maryland, turned a passion project into a small business that allows them to collaborate while baking unique cookies together from family recipes.

Bell’s Reines, a Rockville business, makes miniature gourmet cookies.

“This has been a journey to get to where we are,” Teneisha Thompson said. “We hired a design team to help with the packaging and website.”

Thompson said the cookies give people “a taste of our family’s heritage.”

The idea for the business originally came from Thompson’s daughter, Angel Cephas, who founded a food blog called Dulcet Scintilla.

“It was actually a success,” Thompson said of the blog. “She was making food and we were filming videos.”

It didn’t take long for the two to officially start selling the foods they were introducing on their blog.

The company’s cookies are currently available for purchase online and in dozens of stores in the Washington, D.C., area.

“We use real eggs, real butter and real sugar,” Thompson said. “What was in our kitchens when we were kids is basically what we use today.”

She said working as a mother-daughter duo was “rewarding” and Ms Thompson was “over the moon”.

“Obviously there are conflicts, but there are also fun times,” Thompson explained. “We can talk to mentors and get ideas from other people, but at the end of the day, it’s still me and my daughter’s ideas that will take us to the next level.”

Cephas said her passion for baking goes back several years.

“I started when I was in high school,” Cephas said. “I would bake cakes, cookies, and brownies and give them to friends on their birthdays.”

Cephas and her mother currently bake their products in a commercial kitchen, but eventually they hope to expand the business, get their own kitchen and hire staff.

“It reminds me of my childhood because she would put me on the counter and bake cakes with me,” Cephas said. “This is a way to bond with her and spend quality time with her.”