By Matt Skoufalos
After beginning her health care career as a medical transcriptionist, Rebecca Boal has worked as a medical secretary in the radiology reading room at Virtua Health system for the past 12 years. In her day-to-day job, Boal facilitates communication among radiologists, other physicians and their patients. She’s there to call in urgent findings, import images, troubleshoot technology issues and monitor workflows to make sure studies are interpreted on time.
When she’s not supporting the imaging team at Virtua, Boal spends many of her off-hours growing her family business, Boal House Bake Shoppe, a cottage-industry cookie business that she manages from her home kitchen. She began the venture in 2007, when her daughters, Gabriella and Brianna, were seven and five. Her husband, Rob, brought home a Kitchen Aid mixer, and Rebecca glued herself to YouTube for hours, learning the ins and outs of recipes from online baking channels.
“It’s funny to see from what I started doing to what I do now,” she said. “Everything was trial and error. I practiced and practiced.”
Soon enough, Rebecca was filling her daughters’ elementary-school classroom parties with batch after batch of homemade baked goods. At Christmas, she labored to create cookie trays for family gatherings; by Valentine’s Day, she was tapped for sweetheart gifts. All the while, Rebecca continued to hone her craft, learning to adjust her technique, and amassing tools and equipment as she went.
Boal House Bake Shoppe specializes exclusively in sugar cookies, but even within that niche, its products are widely variable, and labor-intensive, Rebecca said. The most challenging step in her production process absolutely is the artistry involved in the design and presentation of her cookies.
After 14 years of practiced study, she’s learned to pipe her homemade icing directly onto the cookies with a tipless frosting bag. Rebecca claims not to have any formal arts education. “My father was a commercial artist, and I have nice penmanship, but that’s about the extent of it,” she laughed. Still, she has found myriad ways to express herself creatively through her craft cookie business.
“People don’t realize that not only is it making the dough, but then you have to think of the design, and there’s different types of consistencies of royal icing,” Rebecca said. “I get about 10,000 steps from my dining room to my kitchen, mixing and re-mixing; putting the icing in and out of the bag.”
Royal icing is a critical component of Boal House Bake Shoppe cookies. Unlike buttercream frosting, which remains soft, royal icing hardens to a texture akin to candy shell coating that forms the backbone of a decorated cookie.
“When I initially make my royal icing, it goes from a puddle of liquid to thick, puffy clouds of sugar,” Rebecca said. “It’s really neat! If it’s too runny, the icing will drip off the cookie; if it’s too thick, it will be clumpy. Humidity and the weather affect it.”
Getting the final product where it needs to be also takes skill and persistence, because royal icing can be finicky to work with, she said.
“It’s not like throwing some eggs in the blender; it’s not just cut and dry,” Rebecca said. “It takes hours sometimes just to mix colors.”
Rebecca estimates that her collection of cookie cutters has probably exceeded some 750 unique shapes, if not more. When she doesn’t have the pattern for a necessary shape, she’ll fabricate something out of other implements around her kitchen. Some of her inspirations are drawn from other bakers and artists who post their work online; at other times, she’ll get guidance from her clients about their visions for the events at which she’s providing the dessert.
“Sometimes, if it’s a wedding, I ask for the invitation to find out their colors or theme,” Rebecca said. “I look at greeting cards or Pinterest. I go through the process, and I go from there.”
Rebecca is also happy to put the creative impetus in her customers’ hands, primarily with her paint-your-own cookie kits that encourage children to indulge their own impulses with watercolor food dyes. Although her business is busiest during the holiday seasons, which can stretch from fall through the winter months to Valentine’s Day, Boal House Bake Shoppe is full-bore for engagement parties, wedding rehearsal dinners, baby showers and other similar events. In December, she makes cookie advent calendars; throughout the rest of the year, she brings her wares to pop-up events, craft shows and farmers-market-type events.
Customers typically contact Rebecca through her business website, and she picks up the discussion from there. For as much demands as her work and family place on her time, Rebecca still manages to balance orders from the cookie business with the chores of the day at the radiology reading room. Rob helps with cooking dinner, and Gabriella and Brianna have supported the business with their time and talents as well.
“Gabriella just graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in journalism and interactive media design, and she built my website for me,” Rebecca said. “Brianna is graduating from Johnson and Wales, majoring in baking and pastry; once she gets home, I’m going to be putting her to work.”
Rebecca hopes to open her own brick-and-mortar bake shop someday, but concedes that, “with a full-time job, my time is limited.”
“Sometimes it’s tough trying to balance,” she said. “Years from now, I would love for me and my daughter to do something together. I love to bake; I love for people to eat my cookies. I love everything about it.”
When Rebecca isn’t working in health care or the culinary arts, she loves spending her time with her family, including its most recent additions, sibling puppies Finn and Margo. Their favorite destination in summer is the renowned Jersey shore.
