User:Mccormlc/sandbox

Kathleen McCormick

Kathleen Bohannon McCormick (born on August 28th 1963) is a Maryland native cookie connoisseur. She grew up in southern Maryland in Saint Mary’s County. She now lives in a small town outside the D.C. area called Kensington, Maryland. She is a preschool teacher at Outdoor Elementary in Chevy Chase, MD. She has a husband, Casey McCormick, another Maryland native, and 3 daughters: Kate, Caroline, and Lilly. She is known throughout the town of Kensington, MD where she currently resides for her famous chocolate chip cookies.

Some other sweets Kathleen is known for are her banana chocolate chip muffins, cheesecake, and strawberry shortcake. She is known as the “cookie lady” in Kensington. Kathleen has claimed many times before that her recipe was just taken from the back of Toll House cookies bag of chocolate chips. Find that recipe here: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/toll-house-chocolate-chip-cookies But, the neighbors claim after many hours tried with this recipe, the cookies do not taste the same. Although one neighbor, Christine Lucas has come very close but Kathleen still takes the cake. Kathleen tells the town that all she does to perfect the deliciousness is to add extra chocolate chips, leave the butter out rather than refrigerate it, and whisk it by hand not with a machine spinner. She then turns the pan after 9 minutes of baking around for one extra minute. She also undercooks them a little so they are nice and gooey. Still, no one has been able to perfect them. The texture is like no other. Locals have said it’s the best cookie they’ve ever had. Kathleen recently in 2015, started adding dark chocolate chips and pecans to perfect what was already a delicious cookie. She uses the semi-sweet chunks as well.

Early Life Kathleen’s mother (Mary) never cooked or baked growing up. So, Kathleen did all the cooking for her father: Jack, and her siblings: John (56), Mary (59), and Tricia Bohannon (49). Her father owned a local grocery store so she has easy access to get all her ingredients. Kathleen first started making the cookies in Southern Maryland when she was just 16. https://www.visitstmarysmd.com/

She even was asked to sell them at the town Labor Day Parade ( http://tok.md.gov/events/labor-day-parade-and-festival/ ) that is held each year.

Cookie Career McCormick’s cookie business really took off in November 2010 when she started selling them during the holidays. Kathleen started off baking her cookies for neighbors, friends, and family during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Nothing like sharing a warm, gooey, chocolatey cookie with family over a fire. Soon, those happy consumers turned into customers and were asking if they could buy them to give to their own friends and family. McCormick was baking cookies for families she didn’t even know all over the Washington D.C. area from Chevy Chase to Potomac Maryland. http://www.townofchevychase.org/181/Town-History http://www.city-data.com/city/Potomac-Maryland.html This really took off with multiple neighbors lining up at her door or filling up her call list asking for some goodies to give around for the next big holiday.

In 2013, Kathleen was asked by her daughters Kate and Lilly’s high school to sell her cookies at their annual May Field Market in November. http://www.holychild.org/ Kathleen was making at least 3 batches of cookies a day by hand with no help and no electric spinner. All that adds up and she started to get arthritis in her left hand. So, Kathleen took off a few holidays and treated herself with medicine. http://www.arthritis.org/living-with-arthritis/treatments/medication/ Now, she is back to just baking for just her peers and is no longer selling her cookies for profit. Kathleen currently, is looking into creating a local ice cream/bakery where she would sell her cookies and make homemade ice cream. I did not find that many issues with writing my Wikipedia page. I did have some trouble figuring out how to link to different pages. Thinking of a topic that was interesting enough to read about was also difficult. Wikipedia can be difficult to navigate sometimes especially when I was looking for examples. Lastly, since my topic was personal, it was hard to keep an objective point of view.