These chocolate chip cookies are bigger than baseballs and called the best in Texas
When her fresh, golden brown chocolate chip cookies first come out of the oven, Elisia Velasquez thinks about her customers.
She thinks about how excited they’ll be when they see the cookies at the next Texas Farmers Market. The cookies mean a lot to many of her customers, acting as a weekend tradition between mother and daughter, the perfect addition to a party and even a comfort while dealing with a break-up.
Velasquez’s chocolate chip cookies simply make people happy, and that’s exactly how her bakery, Teddy V. Pâtisserie, ended up focused on the classic treat.
125 chocolate chips and 7.2 ounces
Teddy V. specializes purely in chocolate chip cookies with only one current variation — a walnut chocolate chip cookie. Velasquez named her business in honor of her late Lhasa Apso dog Theodore, who she said she was “obsessed with.”
Her cookies contain 125 chocolate chips and weigh 7.2 ounces. That’s bigger than a baseball, which is 5 ounces, Velasquez said.
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The cookies are so large and packed with chocolate that they’re dome-like in shape. Velasquez prides herself on her cookies’ thickness, soft center, crisp outside, and real butter and egg ingredients. Though she said the cookies are tasty as is, she recommends reheating them for five minutes at 410 degrees for an extra crispy outside and warm, gooey inside.
The rich cookies earned Teddy V. the title of best chocolate chip cookie in Texas from Yelp this past August, roughly five years after the bakery’s founding.
‘What’s the secret?’ How chocolate chip cookies cast a spell on baker
Velasquez began baking her chocolate chip cookies in 2017 as she worked in the healthcare field, where she craved the sweet taste of creativity.
“I would see these dessert recipes and just want to make them and would make them,” Velasquez said. “I started making these chocolate chip cookies and just kind of leaned hard into that. They made people so happy, like the therapists that I worked with at the skilled nursing facilities.”
Chocolate chip cookies ended up entrancing Velasquez. They brought her a special kind of excitement, so she didn’t want to branch out to other types of cookies.
“We're always even still just obsessed with baking time and temp,” Velasquez said. “And it's so simple, and people ask, ‘What's the secret?’ But there's seriously so many things that go into it. Like I could tell you a couple of things, and you could make them, and they still may not turn out the same.”
Teddy V. made its debut on Oct. 1, 2017 at Mueller’s Texas Farmers Market. At the time, Velasquez baked out of her home kitchen.
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“It took me so long just to bake 100 cookies,” Velasquez said. “I thought, ‘There's no way. Maybe I do this once a month.’ I just thought, ‘There's no way I can do this all the time.’”
But Velasquez went back to the farmers market the next week. Teddy V. is now at Lakeline’s Texas Farmers Market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday and Mueller’s Texas Farmers Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday — every single weekend.
Teddy V. also sells cookies in Sa-ten Coffee & Eats and all Caffe Medici locations besides downtown. The two-pack of cookies costs $9, and a bag of five cookies cut into quarters — called celebration bags — sell for $20.
Success, 68 cookies at a time
Velasquez quit her full-time job in 2019 to focus on Teddy V. Pâtisserie. In 2020, she acquired her own kitchen space in Elgin and hired a team of five people, two of which were once customers.
“It was a really big step,” Velasquez said. “What was really nice is that in my oven at home, I could only bake eight cookies at a time. And now I had access to an oven where I could bake 68 cookies at a time. So that was really nice, and just kind of freeing up my personal refrigerator from all the butter and stuff.”
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Teddy V.’s next big move came just last year when Velasquez began selling her chocolate chip cookie dough balls at all Central Market locations in Texas. The business deal came as a stroke of luck, Velasquez said. A buyer for the grocery store reached out to her after receiving some cookies as a gift from Vital Farms, which supplies eggs to Teddy V. Pâtisserie.
“I got an email with the subject line, ‘I want to sell your cookies’ or ‘We want to sell your cookies’ from the buyer,” Velasquez said. “It honestly felt too good to be true, and for several weeks, even months, I was just like, ‘When is he going to realize that he made a mistake?’ But fortunately, that has not happened.”
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‘Truly a gift from the heart’: Why community matters to Teddy V.
Velasquez said one of the greatest things to come out of Teddy V. is not success, but community among fellow bakers, farmers market vendors and customers. Velasquez took steps to foster this community through fundraisers, two of which benefited the families of Robb Elementary and her late dog Theodore’s rescue organization.
The Robb Elementary fundraiser saw Teddy V. donate $842 from market sales, and Velasquez said matches from three customers led to a total donation of $3,368.
Danielle Williamson, Teddy V.’s first hire and a former customer, said the community Velasquez has created helped push her to work for the cookie company after she lost her job.
“We just kind of stayed in contact on Instagram, and the more that I interacted with her, the more that I saw that the things that she thought were important were also important to me, and I really enjoyed her sense of community that she built with customers in her interactions online and at the farmers market, as well,” Williamson said.
Customer and now friend Sarah Patterson, who had Teddy V. cater her wedding, referred to herself as a customer advocate and said she’ll always support Velasquez. When Theodore died, Velasquez said Patterson gifted her a framed drawing of her and her pup from an Etsy artist.
“I think something about Elisia is she’s so warm, and it’s really irresistible, very much like her cookies,” Patterson said. “There’s something about when you give her cookies, you feel like you’re giving something that is truly a gift from the heart, like something warm and meaningful even though I didn’t actually even make it myself.”
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Velasquez also makes representation part of her mission at Teddy V., especially because she didn’t have an example of a woman running a similar business when she started.
“It goes such a long way to be able to see people who look like you doing maybe not even things that you want to do, that you don't know that you want to do, but just to see people who look like you in positions of leadership and in business and doing things outside of the box,” Velasquez said.
Velasquez said providing representation for others “really motivates me to keep moving and to keep going” when she feels afraid or insecure.
Last year, Teddy V. participated in a work study program with San Juan Diego Catholic High School, which has a predominantly Hispanic population, Velasquez said. A freshman girl came every Thursday to help out in the kitchen in exchange for partial tuition payment.
“It was really important to me just that she had an example of — just one other example to kind of add to her toolbox — to see someone who looks like her in a position of leadership and her own business,” Velasquez said.
What’s next for Teddy V. Pâtisserie
Velasquez doesn’t see herself purchasing a storefront for Teddy V. Pâtisserie. However, she is working on a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie called “The Theodore” in honor of her beloved dog, who loved peanut butter. She hopes to launch the new variation around the holidays.
“(Our cookies help with) creating moments of joy,” Velasquez said. “Those are things that really make us excited — the connection and moments of joy — and it's kind of like cookies are the vehicle for that. And even with my bigger personal mission, cookies are just kind of the vehicle for that right now.”
5 tips from Elisia Velasquez for baking cookies
Always use parchment paper
Always preheat your oven
Watch your oven, no matter what the baking instructions are
For cookies, avoid opening the oven door unless absolutely necessary because the heat will escape and the oven temperature will drop
Don’t over-mix once you add in flour
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Best chocolate chip cookies in Texas: They might be baked in Elgin
