April 6, 2022

About a year ago, Bakologie by Lauren Lavin started offering cookies in addition to the luscious layer cakes for which she was known. It proved to be such a success, Lavin says on her website, that she has made thousands of cookies since then.

Now, with the help of Breadsmith in Sioux Falls, she’ll be making thousands of cookies every week.

Bakologie cookies will be available at all four Breadsmith locations on Fridays and Saturdays, starting this week.

If the cookies prove popular, Lavin will expand the days.

“I hope to roll out daily offerings in May,” she said. “I hope demand allow for that.”

Susie Patrick has owned and operated Breadsmith in Sioux Falls for 25 years this August. The stores always have offered cookies, she said, but she wanted to expand to a more gourmet offering with unexpected flavors.

“I just think cookies are a pretty hot baked-good item right now, and it was an avenue I wanted to explore for our bakery,” Patrick said. “We currently do cookies and will continue to do, but this is a gourmet cookie with fun flavors.”

Bakologie will offer four cookie flavors each month. Lavin chose cinnamon roll cookie, funfetti cake batter, triple chocolate chip and OG chocolate chip as the kickoff flavors. In May, she will offer a wedding cake cookie, brownie, puppy chow and toffee chocolate chip — her mother’s favorite.

Lavin has chosen the hashtag #quarterpoundcookieclub to emphasize the size of her cookies.

“You think about cookies as being small and a quarter-pound hamburger as huge, and that’s how big these cookies are,” she said.

Despite her own love for cookies, Lavin didn’t offer them when she started Bakologie in 2015 as a high school student. She continued making cakes on the side as a student at the University of South Dakota and began baking full time in 2020 after her graduation.

When Patrick approached Lavin about expanding into Breadsmith, where the cookies will be baked fresh daily, Lavin did not say yes immediately.

“I’ve done everything on my own in my house for years, so to give up some of that control definitely was scary,” she said. “But Breadsmith has a great team of bakers and systems in place.”

For her part, Patrick gave Lavin license “to do what she does and come up with the flavors and the rollout. It really is a true partnership. We’re just really excited to be partnering with Lauren and get the Bakologie cookie to the community.”

Lavin also plans to start a catering and event line called Bakologie Bites. That will offer 2-ounce cookies, scaled for events, large-scale meetings, graduation parties or as favors.