Guava Cheesecake, Coquito Snickerdoodle, Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt. Let’s not stop there. How about the Craggy Chip or the Brookie. Those are just a few of the 1,000 Hot Oven Cookie flavors. Are you craving a cookie now?
We’ve got you. The sweet deliciousness of Hot Oven Cookies has arrived in Westfield and now founder and chief baker Sheila Coon can finally “share the cookie love” here. Cookie lovers craving the arrival of Hot Oven’s creative cookie flavors to Westfield are flocking to the bakery’s new location in the former Mama Cakes location on Elm St where 1,000 cookies were sold on opening day in February.
Sheila, whose daughter Jenei Rivera manages the Westfield store, left Hot Oven’s Springfield location at 11:30AM on opening day to be with Jenei and to meet customers. She said when she walked into the store, there were just two dozen cookies left. “I sent Jenei to Springfield to get more cookies,” Sheila recalled. Then, she baked six dozen more in Westfield. Jenei came back with 300 more cookies – and before the day was over, every cookie had been sold.
“Business has been amazing,” Sheila said. Westfield residents were waiting for Hot Oven to open in a new location near Aldi’s in April of 2021. When that didn’t happen, something better did. When Sheila learned that Mama Cakes was closing, she made an appointment that day with the landlord to look at the space. “We had an agreement the same day,” she said.
Back to the cookies. There are the “Always,” signature flavors that are on the menu all the time – Boozy Cake Batter Sugar, Dark Chocolate Sea Salt, Guava Cheesecake – cheesecake sugar cookie dough, cinnamon, coconut rum, coconut extract, vanilla, guava paste, and cream cheese – all in a cookie. According to Sheila, it’s a riff on a Quesito, a staple in Puerto Rican bakeries. Also, on the “Always” menu is the Coquito Snickerdoodle, another nod to Sheila’s Puerto Rican heritage and inspired by Coquito, a traditional Puerto Rican holiday drink.
Hot Oven’s 1,000 specialty cookies rotate weekly. The Craggy Chip, a vegan cookie has a different texture, more like a mounded cookie, according to Sheila. She describes The Brookie, a double chocolate cookie as “like a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie had a baby.” The weekly menu is posted on the Hot Oven Cookies Facebook page. Cookies are made fresh daily. The store is open Tuesday-Saturday from 11AM to 6PM – or until the cookies sell out. Of the Westfield location, Sheila said, “We couldn’t have asked for a better place.”
Hot Oven Cookies
40 Elm St, Westfield
(413) 889-4099
hotovencookies.com
