And then this bright yellow cottage with a crooked window and a pink door just appeared out of nowhere. That's Mama Bear's Cookies for you. And honestly, I still haven't stopped thinking about those stuffed cookies.

From Rhode Island to the End of a Dirt Road 

Bianca Alicea didn't grow up dreaming about cookies. She grew up in Rhode Island, where she and her mother built a jewelry manufacturing business from scratch. It was successful -- really successful -- but it was all-consuming. Bianca told me they used to celebrate Christmas after New Year's because the holiday season was their busiest time. At some point, she looked around and said, "We need to slow down."

So she sold her stake in the business, packed up her family, and moved to Sullivan, New Hampshire. Inner city Rhode Island to nothing but woods and quiet in a matter of months. And then COVID hit while they were still unpacking boxes.

"For the first time in my adult life, I was not working 10, 12 hours a day," Bianca said. "I just started baking consistently to kind of keep my faculties together."

Her family got a little sick of being the taste testers. The neighbors loved it. And what started as extra cookies on the counter turned into something much bigger.

The Cottage -- Built by Family, Down to the Crooked Window

When Bianca decided to sell cookies, she didn't want just another roadside stand. She went to her father -- a talented carpenter -- and her partner and said, "I have this crazy idea." They said okay.

Her father put the first window in crooked on purpose. The neighbors driving by kept telling him it was installed wrong. He'd say, "It's supposed to be. It's my daughter's idea."

"Everything's a little asymmetrical or oversized or kind of more whimsical than just a standard structure," Bianca explained. The cottage is bright yellow with a shingled roof, that famous crooked window, a bright pink door, oversized cookie decorations outside, a wooden bench for photos, a picnic table, and now a mug exchange where visitors can leave a mug with a token of appreciation inside and take one from someone else in the community.

Inside, there's a shelf of snacking peanut butter jars (homemade, layered with caramel, chocolate, marshmallow, and a crunchy component), a cooler painted like a cow with little milks, coloring pages and activities for kids, a cash box, and a post-it board with several hundred notes from visitors. No cashier. No lock on the door. Just the honor system.

"We've never really had a major issue," Bianca said. "The math is always a little off, but I think it's just because there's a lot of kids in there. But nothing ever major."

A New Menu Every Single Week

Mama Bear's Cookies doesn't repeat. Every weekend brings a brand new lineup of flavors -- stuffed cookies, dipping cookies, cookie fries with salted caramel or chocolate dipping sauce, and those snacking peanut butter jars. Bianca comes up with something new every single week, and one week a month, her cookie crew gets to vote on which past flavors come back.

I asked her about the flavor that flopped. She laughed. A sour cherry pistachio with salted caramel stuffing -- three great things from her Italian bakery roots that just didn't land the way she expected in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, a simple funfetti birthday cake cookie she almost didn't bother making sold out immediately.

"You never know what's going to be the hit," she said. "You just got to get it out there."

Her heritage runs through everything she bakes. Growing up around Italian bakeries in Rhode Island, working in one at 14, her mother's side of the family where food was the centerpiece of every gathering. She's taken those traditional flavors and modernized them for a new audience -- and if you can't make the drive out to Sullivan, you can order online through mamabearscookies.shop and have them shipped right to your door.

Feeding Tiny Tummies and Fostering Newborns

A portion of every sale at Mama Bear's Cookies goes to Feeding Tiny Tummies, a Keene, New Hampshire nonprofit that started in 2017 with 35 families and now serves more than 3,000 people a month facing food insecurity across Cheshire and Sullivan counties. Bianca found out about the organization through a caseworker for one of her foster children.

Because Bianca and her partner Junior are also foster parents. They started the licensing process in 2021, after their son was grown, and they chose to focus on newborns -- babies under one year old, the hardest age to place because most foster families work outside the home.

"Day-to-day life as a foster parent is wonderful," Bianca said. "You get to see these kids thrive in situations that frankly many adults probably couldn't handle. But there are hardships and heartbreaks."

They've had seven foster children in total. Their most recent two were newborns back to back -- a little girl they had for over a year, and then a little boy who arrived just two months after the girl was reunified with her family. When I asked how they keep saying yes, Bianca laughed about the running joke in her family: Junior says they need a break, Bianca agrees, and then DCYF calls a few weeks later and she says yes before she even hangs up the phone.

The Hospitality Story That Started It All

When I asked Bianca for a hospitality story, she didn't talk about a restaurant. She talked about her Italian great-grandparents, Rose and Jim, in their small apartment in Rhode Island. Her grandfather would cook for days before holidays -- handmade raviolis, handmade meatballs -- and anyone and everyone was welcome through that door. The neighbors, the priest from the local church, whoever showed up.

"He never sat down all Christmas," Bianca remembered. "At the time, as a kid, it didn't dawn on me. Now as an adult, I realize he was making sure everyone was fed, your plates were full, it was a welcoming environment."

She paused and said, "To go back one day, I'd give anything. But now I'm grandpa. Now I'm buzzing around."

That's what Mama Bear's Cookies is, really. It's a bright yellow cottage at the end of a dirt road where a woman who grew up watching her grandfather feed everyone is doing the same thing -- one stuffed cookie at a time. 

Listen to the full episode and go experience Mama Bear's Cookies for yourself.

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This episode is sponsored by Belmont Hall & Restaurant in Manchester, NH -- family-owned for over 90 years. belmonthall.net

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ABOUT CAROL ERICKSON

Carol Erickson has owned Red Arrow Diner since 1987 -- four locations across New Hampshire, open 24/7. She started Beyond the Plate to tell the real stories behind the people who make New England's food and hospitality scene what it is. Not just what's on the menu. What's behind it.

Red Arrow Diner: redarrowdiner.com  |  @redarrow24diner