The Buzz on Icebox

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Boulder: A Celebration of 150 Years

Ice Box Bakery

As a Boulder native and mother of two girls, Jen Bush has always believed it was her fate to make cookies. Culinary school in San Francisco gave her the foundation to whip up the ideas, and eight years of experience as a pastry chef in Boulder got her a solid start. From there, she opened a bakery to serve restaurants in Boulder – a business opportunity that allowed her to launched her recipes for cookie dough that contained only the best and natural ingredients she could find – real butter (RBH-free with no growth hormones), cagefree organic eggs, dried cherries, and other natural ingredients.“My recipes are a really good version of the traditional standards.”

Wrapped in parchment and designed to be sliced and baked, the dough took off at the bakery until Jen closed it when her daughters were at the ages of one and three. The idea continued to grow, and on her oldest daughter’s first day of school, Jen had her first meeting with Whole Foods in Boulder. They noted a niche for her product and welcomed her idea into their store. The first Ice Box Bakery cookie dough debuted in the Boulder store for the 2007 holidays.

With a commercial kitchen in Boulder, business started with Jen and a few helpers behind the mixing bowls. They also took on the delivery service, which wasn’t always easy that first year with icy roads and miles to travel. The cookie dough was a hit, and soon Whole Foods sold it in its Fort Collins and Colorado Springs stores.

By the spring of 2008, Jen hired a manufacturer for her cookie dough line to handle the mixing, shipping, and receiving. “For me, it’s been an amazing learning experience, coming from frosting cakes most of my life.”

Today, Ice Box cookies can be found in nineteen states and in a variety of health-conscious stores, with more expansion in the future. For Jen, launching her business in Boulder has been an incredible opportunity, with a lot of natural food industry knowledge and sharing of ideas.

Although it’s been a lot of work, Jen loves the business side of things and the opportunity to still be a mom and pick her girls up from school every day. “You have to have belief in what you’re doing, as well as the support and belief from others. It’s ultimately though all about good quality cookie dough.”

  

Ugga Mugga

Review:Ice Box Bakery

I had the good fortune of trying Ice Box Bakery’s slice and bake cookies this weekend…and wow, they’re yummy! Unlike other cookies in the same form, these have no artificial taste to them. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that Ice Box Bakery cookie dough doesn’t have any artificial ingredients…they’re made with 100% all-natural ingredients: cage-free organic eggs, rBGH-free butter, no hydrogenated oils or transfats, and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives!

Currently, there are five different flavors: Deluxe Chocolate Chip, Classic Sugar Cookie, Farmers Market Cherry Pie, Chewy Ginger Spice and Old Fashioned Peanut Butter. I honestly can not give you a favorite from the five…they’re all good and chewy!

Finally, a natural, great-tasting, and easy cookie to make at a moment’s notice. Keep your refrigerator or freezer stocked, don an apron, splash a dash of flour on your cheek, and you’ll be sure to impress at the next play date you host!

Visit iceboxbakery.com for purchase locations.

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Celebrity Parents Magazine

Moms We Love: Jennifer Bush of Ice Box Bakery

One of the classic moments in childhood is prepping and eating cookies made from a cookie dough log with your fam. Well, Jennifer Bush of Ice Box Bakery has reinvented the, um, log with her delicious (and healthy!) cookie doughs for the modern parent and child. Minus all the nasty hydrogenated shortening, fillers and preservatives.

How did Ice Box Bakery begin?
I trained as a pastry chef, and I worked mostly as a restaurant dessert chef. I always had the cookie dough idea in the back of my head. When I had my daughters, Chloe, 10, and Charlotte, 7, I took off from work. It was then that I started developing the dough and the flavors. I launched a bakery in Boulder, CO and we sold the cookie dough out of the pastry case. We would roll it in parchment paper and sell it. We got amazing feedback. Moms would come in to buy it for soccer games, parties, any time they needed to make cookies.

Ice-box-bakery-2 When did you decide to focus solely on the cookie dough?
In November 2007, Whole Foods in Boulder said that there was a real niche for it. They sold it and then we began expanding store to store and region to region.

How would you describe the cookie dough?
It’s made with all natural ingredients. We knew that we could make it healthier than what is currently being sold. It’s a clean cookie dough, made with natural ingredients. It’s a cookie dough you can feel good about feeding your kids.

I love that it’s packaged as a log. How did you come up with the retro theme?
I really wanted to hearken back to a time when moms baked more. Moms were home and they had the time to make cookies for their kids. I also love the format of the slice-and-bake. Also, the packaging forms a really tight air barrier. The cookie dough roll is very recognizable, too.

Ice-box-bakery What are your most popular flavors?
Of course, chocolate chip is our best seller, but our cherry pie cookie does very well, too. We have seven flavors, but two are local only to Colorado.

You must have grown up eating a ton of cookie dough.
No, I didn’t! My mom was a great baker, so I never really had it as a child. As an adult, I’ve had it often. The other brands have so much hydrogenated shortening in the dough that it crumbles when you cut it. If you really taste it, you’ll realize how funny that tastes!

[laughs] Oh, so you mean it’s not supposed to slide down your throat like that? Now, where is the line going?
I’m planning on branching out into more baked goods, like cinnamon rolls and brownies. There are so many kids and adults who are celiacs, so we’re doing a gluten free chocolate chip that will launch in the next 6 months. I’m excited about it.

Ice box family You must be the coolest mom ever in your daughters’ school to own a cookie dough company!
Chloe and Charlotte definitely love it. The business consumes a lot of my day, though, so I found the best thing to do was to involve the girls. They will help me put things together, and do Kinko’s runs with me. It gives them a feeling of ownership, which is important to me. I wanted it to be a positive experience for them.

Do you think they will help you with the business when they are older?
I think Chloe will. She’s a foodie! They’re both so helpful, though. They will taste test new flavors for me, although sometimes they’ll ask me not to put the cookies in their lunchbox all the time! [laughs]

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