Chewing Over the $25 Cookie

Before they opened Cookie Road in Greenpoint earlier this month, owners Jerzy and Aneta Szot were artists -- both earned their MFAs from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poland. "I was a painter, and she was a graphic designer," Jerzy Szot tells Fork in the Road. But Aneta "baked all her life -- it was her dream. So we follow her dream now."

The Szots, who have lived in the neighborhood for nine years, own the building on the corner of Franklin and Oak streets where their bakery is located, and spent about a year renovating the space. While they offer a selection of cakes, pies, and cupcakes, it's their line of hand-painted cookies that speak most directly to the Szots' past vocation. Adorned with the (completely edible) likenesses of everyone from Marilyn to Marlon Brandon in <em>The Godfather</em>, they "are not a cookie anymore, but a small painting," says Szot.

While their price tag -- a single cookie can cost $25 -- may raise more eyebrows than blood sugar levels, Szot attributes the cookie's cost to the degree of labor involved in their creation. "It depends what the subject is and the difficulty of the design preparation," he says, adding that lately, he's been doing a lot of Michael Jackson cookies. Are they popular? "Yes," he says with a laugh. "People buy what they're talking about."