AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Re­porter

The art of mak­ing the per­fect cook­ie is a skill not every­one pos­sess­es. But busi­ness own­er Seani­ka Samuel has spent long hours per­fect­ing her gourmet recipe through tri­al and er­ror to en­sure the rich­est taste with an amaz­ing tex­ture. Most im­por­tant­ly, it won’t cost you $500.

Fol­low­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew talk show to pro­mote her dessert busi­ness, The Can­dy Ta­ble, Seani­ka has had more eyes on her sweet treats and cre­ations than ever be­fore. The clip, which has at­tract­ed thou­sands of likes on so­cial me­dia, dis­plays talk show host Ja­son ‘JW’ Williams in an ex­u­ber­ant trance, pas­sion­ate­ly de­vour­ing a num­ber of her desserts, with her gourmet cook­ies be­ing an ob­vi­ous de­light.

The 29-year-old bak­er had al­ways dreamed of pur­su­ing for­mal culi­nary stud­ies. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that did not hap­pen, and she end­ed up with a tra­di­tion­al cor­po­rate of­fice job. But that dream did not fade.

“Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, I came back to my first love—cook­ing. I al­ways had a sweet tooth. Even in my job, I was al­ways known as the girl who would bring sweets. I’d al­ways bring sam­ples and try and get lit­tle sales and stuff from them,” Seani­ka told Guardian Me­dia.

Seani­ka’s dessert busi­ness idea soon took off. To­geth­er with her hus­band, Mic­ah, she has be­come well known for her sig­na­ture caramel ap­ples (ap­ples dipped and coat­ed in caramel and oth­er sweet top­pings), cakesi­cles and oth­er in­ter­est­ing pas­tries.

But it is Seani­ka’s cook­ies that have drummed up the most at­ten­tion and in­ter­est.

“I am a self-pro­claimed cook­ie crit­ic. I mean, I love my­self a good Sub­way cook­ie right? Like who doesn’t? But as I start­ed to dive more in­to this busi­ness, my palate changed, and I al­ways liked the idea of gourmet things. Like it should look a cer­tain way, and it should taste a cer­tain way as well.”

At The Can­dy Ta­ble, cus­tomers can pur­chase stan­dard cook­ie flavours, such as the tra­di­tion­al dou­ble choco­late chip and oth­er clas­sic op­tions. But when it comes to the gourmet cook­ies, this is where the re­al mag­ic hap­pens. They are thick­er, fea­tur­ing cake-like, gooey cen­tres.

From Seani­ka’s Bis­coff gourmet cook­ies to pecan, salt­ed caramel, s’mores, black for­est, peanut but­ter choco­late and cook­ies and cream, her cre­ations have cap­tured the at­ten­tion and taste buds of many.

While this may seem like an easy skill for Seani­ka, she says she spent a year af­ter open­ing her busi­ness de­vel­op­ing and re­fin­ing her recipe to en­sure a prod­uct peo­ple would love.

“I was able to pro­duce over a pe­ri­od of time through dif­fer­ent pop-ups to get cus­tomer feed­back, to make sure that it’s some­thing that was look­ing good, some­thing that I could stay con­sis­tent in. And then when I was com­plete­ly sat­is­fied with it, I launched my cook­ies. I be­lieve it was in 2024 when I ful­ly came out with the menu for my cook­ies,” Seani­ka ex­plained.

“By the first bite, you will know that it is some­thing ex­cep­tion­al. The out­side is crunchy, the cen­ter is soft and pil­lowy. It is meant to re­sem­ble cook­ies by Lev­ain Bak­ery in New York. I did a lot of re­search in­to how they make their cook­ies be­cause they are a well-known glob­al brand.”

On so­cial me­dia, Seani­ka con­tin­ues to show­case her great pas­sion and play­ful ap­proach to the bak­ing process, us­ing unique and un­like­ly in­gre­di­ents to in­vent new gourmet cook­ies, even in­cor­po­rat­ing pota­to chips and pret­zels to com­bine sweet and salty flavours.

When asked if any of these ex­per­i­men­tal cre­ations would be­come a sta­ple on her menu, Seani­ka said they might not, but not­ed that the fam­i­ly and friends who were blessed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to taste-test them ab­solute­ly loved them.

“These are one-time things. But I mean, if any­body is in­ter­est­ed in it, I def­i­nite­ly don’t mind mak­ing it. So if any­body wants to try it, just talk to us,” she laughed.

For Seani­ka, it was vi­tal to en­sure her cook­ies, whether stan­dard or gourmet, could ap­peal not on­ly to every­one’s taste but al­so to their pock­ets.

“Let’s say, the stan­dard cook­ies gen­er­al­ly just have like a few al­ter­ations, so it might just be a sim­ple choco­late chip. But for the gourmet choco­late chip cook­ies it will have a lit­tle more va­ri­ety and ad­di­tions.”

And with the re­cent heat­ed top­ic over the last few weeks fo­cused on a lo­cal Tik­Tok con­tent cre­ator cou­ple sell­ing cook­ies for $500 per dozen, many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have shared their thoughts on the high price point. It al­so prompt­ed oth­er lo­cal brands to jump in­to the con­ver­sa­tion and show­case their own of­fer­ings.

Seani­ka, how­ev­er, chose not to jump on the band­wag­on or speak out­right on the con­tro­ver­sy. When asked, she ad­mit­ted that, as a cus­tomer, spend­ing $500 on cook­ies was “out of her tax brack­et,” but said she al­so un­der­stood that some busi­ness­es strug­gle with pric­ing and recog­nis­ing their val­ue.

“I don’t want to bash an­oth­er busi­nessper­son be­cause I know if I was in their shoes, every­one makes mis­takes right?” she said.

When it comes to her own busi­ness, Seani­ka said she has al­ways tried to cater to cus­tomers with dif­fer­ent bud­gets, en­sur­ing that even those look­ing for a more af­ford­able treat could find some­thing to en­joy.

“I al­ways en­sured that it was some­thing that the av­er­age per­son who’s on the streets could be able to buy,” she said, ex­plain­ing that she tries to serve dif­fer­ent clients at dif­fer­ent price points.

At the same time, Seani­ka ac­knowl­edged that many of her prod­ucts fall in­to the gourmet cat­e­go­ry and are there­fore priced at a pre­mi­um.

“As I said, I know the ma­jor­i­ty of my items are gourmet, so they are pre­mi­um priced goods. But there are still things as well that you know we would have we would of­fer for every­one be­cause again I have not al­ways been in a po­si­tion where I could af­ford them as well, so I could re­late.”

That ex­pe­ri­ence, she said, al­so shaped the phi­los­o­phy be­hind The Can­dy Ta­ble busi­ness: cus­tomers should feel that what they pur­chase is worth the hard-earned mon­ey they spend.