Life Through Cookies

DAWN NELSON ’82, longtime kindergarten teacher for Portland Public Schools, says she’s “failing at retirement.” Her willingness to substitute teach may be partly to blame. As a seasoned teacher, she was asked (possibly begged) to participate in distance learning for kindergartners and fourth graders—and a few grades in between—during the 2020/21 school year. But the main reason she hasn’t had too much downtime in the last year is her booming cookie business. An independent “cookier,” as they call themselves in the industry, her record is 65 dozen in one week. (Quick math: that’s 780 cookies made with only one oven and two hands.)

Not only is her work beautiful (and tasty, according to word on the street), but the “why” of her work is beautiful too. Cookies are the way she walks with people through life’s events. Some events are happy: retirement, US citizenship, graduation, babies, quarantine birthday parties. Some involve life’s trials: one client who lost her brother asked Dawn to create cookies that replicated the tattoos that the siblings all shared.

And she donates lots of cookies to fundraisers—Bakers Against Racism, St. Mary’s Academy high school (her other alma mater), the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It seems she takes any chance she gets to use these sweet goodies to spread, well, goodness. When she traveled to Hawai'i, she made some for housekeeping, and she uses them as ice-breakers for her students.

Sometimes the cookies come with sage advice: There must always be several of the coolest-looking ones at a birthday party—otherwise, she says, “They’re going to fight over it.” (Trust the kindergarten teacher to have wisdom like this.) She has also gained somewhat amusing insights: “People love to see their face on a cookie.”

Just a heads up, you need to order from Auntie Dawn’s Custom Cookies well in advance. She gets booked up fast and remember, she’s retired (kind of).