It’s National Cookie Day in the USA on Monday 04th December, so we thought we would tell you the tale of the Precious Pressure Cookies.
Earlier this year a regular Client of ours fondly (and aptly) nick-named us their ‘Pressure Cookies’.
This sparked an idea in the studio to make our own delicious and branded homemade ‘Pressure Cookies’.
At the time Daniela (Dela) Klee was an intern at the Studio and took it upon herself to research and test ‘the best cookie recipe ever. After some back and forth with Chat GPT and many many recipes tweaked, cooked and then tested by our team, it’s safe to say that ‘the best cookie recipe ever’ was indeed found.
Dela has finished her internship at Pressure Cooker Studios and has started her own business ‘Tulips & Flour’, making her creations available to the world.
At our 13th Birthday celebration in October, we opted for platters of Dela’s cookies instead of the catering dessert, so that we could finally share the perfected recipe with our clients.
Dela is not only a keen baker, but has some impressive drawing and embroidery skills too. She gifted this artwork to the team at the studio:
If these characters seem familiar to you, it’s because we transformed them into our very own comic strip ‘The Studio’ which you can find at the bottom of our monthly Pulse mailer. (Subscribe here if you aren’t already).
We subjected Dela to some questioning in order to gain some insight into what makes this creative cookie tick.
What was your experience like working at Pressure Cooker Studios?
I had heard from so many grownups that you’ll most likely hate your first job and that you have to work your way up, so don’t expect much from it.
As realistic as that advice was, I had no idea how lucky I’d be. I’d been placed in a positive, encouraging, safe, non-toxic work environment as my first job, where you could speak up and you would be heard, where you would be pushed to your full potential, where people encouraged collaboration over ‘gatekeeping’, and where your co-workers turned from strangers, to friends, to family in a matter of months.
Pressure Cooker really values both quality of work and quality of people, through kindness, collaboration and the sharing of knowledge.
The people of Pressure Cooker are a fantastic and inspiring bunch of humans and I’m so thankful that I had the opportunity to be a part of the team for some time.
What gave you the idea to create the artworks of the team?
My love language has always been gift giving. The team had given me so much, I just wanted to give them something in return.
Like any creative idea, it started with something basic that flourished into something even greater.
It started with cartoon drawings of everyone but, then I thought, anyone can draw cartoons, right? Can anyone hand embroider cartoons? I wanted the artwork to be a one of a kind, just like the team.
Have you always loved baking? Who taught you how?
Baking has always been a huge part of my home life and my family’s German culture. I was surrounded by delicious food throughout my childhood. From my gran and I baking German “Schneckenudeln” on a weekly basis, to my mom and I baking all kinds of cookies, biscuits, and cakes. My mom taught me about 90% of everything I know about baking. She is a wise woman for sure.
It was only much later in my life when I started baking on my own. It all clicked for me when I realised how artistic baking can actually be. It started with designing a Golden Girls themed birthday cake for my 22nd birthday and then turned into baking creative desserts anytime I got the opportunity to host a dinner party or gift people at the office with a treat.
I started baking in a very chaotic time in my life and my favourite part about it (besides eating the final product) was that you’re given a recipe: You’re told exactly how much you need of which ingredient and what you need to do to get the perfect result. If only life came with a recipe to follow for the perfect outcome. I’d be saving a lot of money on baking ingredients.
Will you ever share your cookie recipe?
I mean, never say never but at the moment I’d love to keep it in the family and hope to pass it down one day. However, during my time at Pressure Cooker Studios I got to experience how powerful the sharing of knowledge can be, so let’s just say that the door isn’t completely shut. Who knows? I might share it with the world in a few years time. Or when I run out of content ideas for my Instagram account.
