In 2016, then stay-at-home mom Loraine Houston started baking up her second act, using lots of butter, sugar and flour.
She named her small-batch shortbread brand Blake's Mother's Cookies.
Houston says her youngest son, Blake, got a summer job working at a farm market and she would send her homemade shortbread cookies with his lunch.
Word got out about the cookies.
"Everybody loves them," says Houston, owner of Blake's Mother's Cookies. "They're so buttery."
She makes six flavors.
"The classic is the basic shortbread flavor, and it's used for all the rest of them," says Houston.
She adds flavor enhancements to the classic shortbread mix for the other varieties, which includes herbs and flowers, like lavender.
"All the flavors are very subtle," she says.
For the lemon shortbread, she adds lemon oil. Rosemary was the original flavor.
"I had one at a party out in Long Island and I thought it was out of this world," she says.
Houston, a trained chef, created her own version.
"Blake's summer job was in Amagansett," she says. "We go out there in the summer, so I played (the name) off that."
She says Amagansett is also "a place we love."
The shortbread names are an ode to the Hamptons on Long Island in New York.
"Montauk Macaroon, which is coconut," says Houston. "Sag Harbor Spice, it's a cinnamon spice."
For the holidays, she adds a seasonal seventh flavor.
"I make maple pecan," she says.
Houston bakes six days a week in a co-op kitchen.
"I do a flavor a day," she says. "I put it through my machine, which is a wire cutter."
"I cut them thin on purpose, so they aren't like a traditional shortbread in the big blocky chunk, because I prefer a more delicate cookie," she says.
Her cookies are sold locally at select stores, but she also packages and ships online orders.
"They're wonderful and they make great gifts," she says. "I'm proud of it."
Blake's Mother's Cookies
Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/4blakesmotherscookies/
Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/blakesmotherscookies/?hl=en
Blake's Mother's Cookies
210 Carter Drive
Suite 10
West Chester, PA 19382