Do-Biz Bakeries 555 Walnut Street Suite 205 Des Moines, IA 50309 515.244.6303 |
:: Julia In the NewsDo-Biz cookies, chock full of yum When Julia "The Cookie Lady" Kim does impressions of some of her customers at the Do-Biz Cookies shop in the downtown skywalk, she nearly faints. "One woman who had moved to Kansas City was back visiting Des Moines," Kim says, waving her arms and clutching her chest for the big finish. "She said, 'Oh my God! Do-Biz!' She ordered four dozen." If you've tasted one of the many varieties of cookies, you'll understand. They're giant. They're gooey. And they're often warm, right from the oven. Kim says the milk chocolate chip cookies are the most popular, but customers can choose from snickerdoodles, dusted with cinnamon, or the ridiculously decadent Garbage Greats, loaded with coconut, granola, nuts, butterscotch chips and chocolate chips. Although Kim claims the cookies cure not only hunger but headaches, too, she herself has never developed a taste for them. She says sweets, including chocolate, aren't very popular in South Korea, where she lived until moving to Iowa in 1978. Her family still can't believe she runs a cookie shop. "The first time I opened, you know how many cookies I burned? Twenty dozen. I was so scared," she says, deftly pulling a tray of peanut butter cookies from the display rack. Since then, she's developed a few tricks of the trade. After seeing the former owner form each ball of dough with an ice-cream scoop, Kim took a hammer to a muffin tray and pounded all of the cups shallower. Now she presses dough into the molds and shakes them onto baking trays in just a few seconds. The dough itself arrives at the shop in the same frozen tubes available at most Hy-Vee and Dahl's grocers. It's made in Ames, where the company was founded two decades ago. Since Do-Biz's founding, the cookies - and The Cookie Lady herself - have developed quite a following in Central Iowa. Kim estimates that 90 percent of her customers are regulars, including a long list of political bigwigs. She says Gov. Tom Vilsack occasionally sends someone from his office to pick up an order. "That would never happen in Korea," Kim said. "I go home every night and say, 'Hey, honey, I'm a big woman.'"
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