Sometimes at the end of a long, chilly autumn day, all you need is a big warm homemade cookie.
No one knows that better than Amy Wong and Lawrance Combs, co-founders of Batch 22 Bakery. Every week, the small business owners make thick, gooey pudges — which is a special nickname for their 6 oz. cookies — out of their home kitchen in Cupertino.
But these aren’t just any old cookies. Batch 22’s flavors range from the All-American Chocolate Chip to Asian-inspired Ube and Matcha cookies. Special seasonal pudges make their way into the menu, like Pumpkin Spice and Gingerbread during the fall, and Pink Lemonade and S’mores during the summer months.
Cookie lovers can snag a batch by ordering online at Batch 22’s website. Wong and Combs offer deliveries to anyone living in Santa Clara County, but customers can also pick up cookies at Batch 22’s pop-up shops in Cupertino. Outside of the county, people can buy pudges at selected retail stores, like Ponyo Foods in Milbrae or Tea on Piedmont in Oakland.
Batch 22 was born in the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and has only grown since then. The business’s Instagram boasts more than 4,700 followers as of Oct. 18, and Wong bakes around 200 to 300 cookies a day to fulfill anywhere from 10 to 35 orders. The bakery will expand into a brick-and-mortar shop at 15466 Los Gatos Blvd at the end of this year.
We recently asked Wong and Combs about Batch 22. Their answers are edited for length and clarity.
Q: What is the meaning behind Batch 22?
Lawrance: In the beginning we came through a bunch of different options. We came across Amy’s bakery, but then we thought everybody does that … Amy has a punny sense of humor, so we wanted to make the name some sort of pun or some sort of joke almost. We decided on Batch 22, batch being batch of cookies and Catch 22 being the impossible decision. I thought that it worked very well for selling cookies to people.
Q: What inspired you to start a cookie business?
Lawrance: At first we thought maybe we would start (selling) milk bread, (Amy) was making so many during the pandemic, but she had already battle tested all these cookies. She used to go to the gym and hand out cookies she was testing to random gym goers … They were so good everyone looked forward to them, and the bread wasn’t quite there yet.
Amy: After I had my first Levain Cookie in 2016, I’ve been trying to recreate it. Eventually I did have my own recipe for Oatmeal Raisin, and then I started to make other cookies. I had been testing cookies for three or four years by then . Now people ask me if I would ever branch out to other stuff, but I’m like, no, there are so many other flavors I could make. Cookies are such a specialty, they are so deceptive. They look so simple but are actually quite difficult to …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
