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At the end of 2020, Hollister resident Jenny Meza was struggling with two problems. She had just graduated after majoring in psychology and had a student debt to pay. And at the height of the pandemic, jobs were few and far between. Also, she was bored with sitting at home.
Turning to her favorite hobby, baking, she founded Sweet al Amor, a home-based business that has grown steadily since. She is in her second year of selling at the Hollister Farmers’ Market but has built up a following for her line of treats, both catering locally with her “Sweet Cart” and taking orders nationwide through her website.
“My life definitely took a different route,” she said. “But baking is now my full-time job, and I just want to keep expanding. There are so many more things I want to achieve.”
Meza began her business by offering boxes of assorted Christmas cookies she delivered locally.
“They were from a basic sugar cookie recipe,” she said. Some had cutouts and different flavors, and I decorated them. I started making cookies for other holidays, which was my thing for about a year. ”
Looking to expand her business, she started doing events and pop-ups, slowly trying to find her focus.
“I was doing OK financially,” Meza said. But once I started to expand and figure myself out more, I was able to decide on what I actually wanted to do. That’s when business really started taking off.”
Finding her market, she started baking specialty “gourmet” cookies, which are a bit complex, with a wider variety of special ingredients baked or stuffed into the cookie.
“I used to do a bit of everything,” she said. “I had a wide variety of desserts, but I had never really gotten it down to what I truly knew I wanted to sell. Once I cut it down to cookies and pretzels, everything got easier.”
Of course, “easy” is a relative concept. On days when she is scheduled to sell, she prepares all of her dough the night before and gets up at 6 a.m. to do the baking. She has upgraded to a commercial oven, which has more than doubled the number of cookies she can bake in a batch but she still works for around six hours getting her cookies done.
She will make around 200 of her large 6-ounce cookies for an event like the Farmers’ Market, baking six different types drawn from a rotating menu. Her bestseller, chocolate chip, is always one of the selections.
After that, she will make upwards of 100 mini-chocolate cookies, which she sells in six-cookie packs or 21-cookie buckets. Finally, she bakes at least 60 pretzels. By 12:40 p.m., she is packed up and ready to go.
The key to her cookies’ appeal is their occasionally wild creativity. The Cookie Monster, for example, starts with blue sugar cookie dough that wraps around both a cream cookie and a crunchy chocolate chip cookie, which is then topped with chocolate cookie crumbs. That is four cookies in one, all of them delicious.
The Red Velvet cookie is another customer favorite, made with a red velvet emulsion and stuffed with a small mountain of cream cheese frosting. The Mini Egg cookie is filled with Cadbury mini eggs that are simultaneously gooey and crunchy.
Meza also caters, filling her Sweet Cart with anywhere from 150 to 600 sweets, depending on the expected number of guests, with all items selected and baked to customer demand.
Somewhere down the line, Meza dreams of owning her own bakery.
“People want to buy cookies,” she said. “It is more popular than you might think. There are a lot of big cookie chains that started off as home bakers. All you have to do is work at it.”
Baked Goods a la Sweet al Amor
Funfetti: This is a festive sugar cookie filled with candy sprinkles and white chocolate chips. It’s not a greatly nuanced cookie—the sprinkles are pretty, but they don’t add taste. But the abundance of white chocolate chips and the party-atmosphere look of the cookie should make it a favorite with kids. While tasting this one, I yearned for a glass of milk—it would be a perfect combination.
S’mores: This is chocolate cookie dough that has been stuffed with milk chocolate, marshmallows and a graham cracker. In the baking, the cracker seems to be absorbed by the dough, though you can taste it and see vestiges of it if you look hard enough. No matter, the star here is the melted chocolate and marshmallow that oozes out as you eat it. Frankly, just the chocolate cookie on its own without the filling is magnificent—chewy and rich—but there is something absolutely decadent about the combination of all the ingredients.
Biscoff Cookie Butter: This cookie has a lot going on. It starts with a rolled-out sugar cookie base packed with white chocolate chips, which is then wrapped around a ball of brown butter cookie dough and topped with a Biscoff cookie. The center stays creamy during the baking and harmonizes nicely with the abundant white chocolate chips. The cookie on top is a lagniappe, offering some light cinnamon notes.
Pepperoni Pretzel This pretzel is available in three styles: salted, pepperoni, and pepperoni with jalapenos. There are also three optional dips: cheese, cinnamon and marinara. I really like the chewiness of these pretzels, and the obvious go-to here is the warm jalapeno pepperoni with marinara, a nice pizza-like snack.
For the April 24 Farmers’ Market, Meza also offered her customer-favorite chocolate chip cookies, which she has on the menu every week. There was also a lemon poppyseed cookie, a sugar cookie filled with lemon curd and her pecan dulce de leche cookies, filled with creamy dulce de leche, covered in milk chocolate and topped with chopped pecans.
Sweet al Amor can also be found online on Instagram and Facebook. A selection of cookies is also available at Windmill Market in San Juan Bautista.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping to expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and give our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
