Meet Stephanie Middleton | Bakery

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Middleton and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
I have loved baking since I was a toddler helping my mom mix up and roll out dough! I always wanted my own bakery, but the timing was just never right – and then I realized that if I kept waiting for the right time, I would never start a business. So now, with a full time job, a wife, and a toddler of my own, I’ve jumped into being an entrepreneur! We struggled with a business name for a while, until an unfortunate battle with a batch of M&M cookies over the 2020 Christmas season. The afternoon ended with me in tears, covered in flour, with a pile of ruined cookies sitting on a plate – yelling to my wife that it was a “Cookie Catastrophe”! And she casually took a bite from the pile of cookies and said, well, I think you just named your business. So, as a tribute to all the flour explosions, burnt cookies, and complete disasters on my journey learning to bake, The Cookie Catastrophe was born! It’s a constant reminder to myself that things happen, and that’s just something to learn from and move on to the next challenge!

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My goal as a baker is to just make delicious baked goods and get them in the hands of as many people as I can. I love baking and I want to share that with others! We are on a mission to try as many new things as we can – our most recent new adventure was homemade marshmallows, and we’ve been experimenting with flavors for the past couple months. For me, it’s just an excuse to try my hand at different things and see what I can do! Of course, with all this experimenting, things are bound to go wrong sometimes – and I’ve learned that’s ok! I’m a perfectionist, and I have a hard time moving on after a setback – but this has been such an adventure of learning from my mistakes and figuring out how to make it better the next time. And that’s huge for me! The Cookie Catastrophe is all about trying until we get it right, and then sharing our excitement with you!!! And this is truly a family operation – I do the baking, my wife, Krystal, does the branding, and I can’t wait for the day when our daughter, Abby, can bake right alongside me! We are just getting started… and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We live outside of Orlando… the best time ever is acting like a tourist for a day!!! Hitting up theme parks, shopping outlets, I-Drive, mini-golf… to me, it doesn’t get any better than that!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I could not do what I do every day without the support of my wife, Krystal. While working her full time job, she also finds the time to care for our toddler while I bake, help clean up after marathon baking sessions, handles a majority of the business social media posts, and does ALL of my labeling, signage, and graphics work! She’s a true rockstar behind the scenes – I always say I have the easy job of baking, she handles all the hard work!

Website: the-cookie-catastrophe.square.site

Instagram: @thecookiecatastrophe

Facebook: @thecookiecatastrophe

Image Credits
Krystal Lenz