Hey Mom! Christine the cookie maker is Abilene's Shug
Mom to four boys.
Cookie baker of dozens for dozens.
And, now Mrs. Lovett, who makes the most unusual meat pies with a guy named Sweeney Todd.
Stir those ingredients together and you get Christine Pinson.
Better known as the Abilene woman who makes "Hey Sugar" cookies.
Word of mouthful success
Recently, Beth Silvers and Sarah Stewart Holland, hosts of the popular podcast "Pantsuit Politics," were in Abilene to speak. Before they got to that, they raved about Hey Sugar cookies.
Holland commented that with a box of 12, even Silvers could have one.
That's the kind of advertising that has made Christine Pinson's homegrown business a winner.
Something she has fit into her family, church and social life.
(This interview was held after she put her youngest son down for a nap.)
Her calendar is full, for sure. Somehow, though, she makes it work, even if that means staying up late for some of that treasured alone-time.
Not intentionally, Pinson is Abilene's mile-a-minute mom.
"That is so funny because that is so opposite of my actual nature," she said. "I am a very introverted person who needs a lot of down time. I just don't give that to myself as I probably should."
Hey, that's because Hey Sugar cookies have become too popular. The Pantsuit women have asked about getting some mailed to them. Each lives in Kentucky.
"Its overwhelming," Pinson admitted, "but in a good way."
Let's meet 'Shug'
Christine (Tyndall) Pinson is a 2003 Abilene Christian University graduate who came here from Carrolton. She "re-met" her husband, Matt, as members of the same friends group at ACU. But they had met in high school. He's from Fort Worth.
"We became really good friends, and then we were in love with each other," he said.
They moved away after graduation before returning to Abilene in 2011.
Abilene, she said, has a way of pulling you back, and they found themselves joining other friends in returning to the Big A.
Her husband is director of visual arts at Highland Church of Christ. In the cookie operation, "I call myself the president of acquisitions and distributions," he said.
He's also partly to blame for the name.
Matt playfully calls his wife "Shug."
"It's just a natural thing," he said. "I am sure I heard my dad call my mom 'Sugar'. It has been my way to address her for almost 20 years."
"Hey, Shug," he'll call out at home.
Her grandmother also called her Sugar.
When it came time to name her cookie-baking enterprise, the term of endearment stuck like a chocolate chip placed in dough.
Besides, the name imparts the need for a sugar rush.
"Hey, I need some sugar!" she said, laughing. "Like, right now!"
The couple has four boys, ranging from soon-to-be Abilene High graduate Jack to 3-year-old Max. In between are Sam, 15, and Owen, 7.
"Simple names," she said. "They learned to spell them pretty quickly.
"And we're doing all the stages of parenting at the same time. Basically, we live in a dorm," she said, describing their home life. "Someone's always hungry. I am pretty much making food at all hours of the day. The little ones are up early and the big ones are up late."
Well, let them eat cookies.
She made cookie dough weekly and stored it in the fridge. If one of the older boys wanted cookies, he could bake it himself.
Some boys would call her a dream mom for that opportunity.
Launching a business ... during a pandemic
Christine grew up in the kitchen, working with her grandmother, Barbara Crouch, and her mother, Mindy. Food was central to family gatherings, she said.
"I always loved cooking and baking," she said.
Besides, cooking and baking are calming, she said. And it taps her creativity.
It was calming, at least, until she began an at-home business that has spread by word of mouthful.
There are many cookie option in Abilene, she said. But there wasn't an on-demand enterprise for fresh-baked cookies when she first thought about a business.
"I've always been interested in making unique flavors, and that had been living in my brain a little while," she said.
The business launched in October 2020, when Abilene still was dealing with COVID-19. But the couple had time then to talk about making a go of it.
"I don't know why we thought starting a business in the middle of a pandemic was such a great idea but it worked out OK for us," she said.
It started small, with order forms posted. There still is no official Hey Sugar website.
Word just got around. No advertising was needed.
The plan was that she would bake to order and then she and/or her husband would deliver those Fridays and Saturdays.
She bakes fresh to order, keeping her stock of dough filled best she can.
"There have been times when they're still warm," she said. "That would be my goal if we could make that happen all the time."
Hot or not, her cookies were a hit right off the batter.
"We had a huge response," she said. "It just has continued from there."
Since she started, Crumbl Cookies opened in southwest Abilene.
"I can't compete with them so I'm not even going try you know," she said. "We have like really great wonderful people who support our business and tell other people about it so I haven't really thought about it. We were doing it before they came."
Hey Sugar has grown since Crumbl opened, so she concentrates on that.
Confession - "I've never actually been to Crumbl," she said, laughing.
"There's something for everybody."
The cookie business has extended into the week and now includes pop-ups.
"It has been good. A little overwhelming," she said. "I wasn't expecting this response."
During a pandemic, a delicious cookie or two, or a dozen, may have been some of the best medicine out there.
Mom is a cookie monster
Her goal was to offer 12 flavors each month. And not the intricately designed cookies others in Abilene are known for.
"That is not my gift at all. I do enjoy creating something that looks really beautiful and tastes really good," she said.
She soon found that she could bake the four most popular cookies every month. The other eight could rotate.
The go-to cookies are:
Hey Sugar sugar cookie
Classic Chocolate Chip
Cookie Butter, the No. 1 fan favorite
Cookies 'N' Cream.
To date, she has created more than 150 flavors, but those four have become her greatest hits of this rock star mom.
Most popular are her boxes of a dozen cookies. Some want a sampler for variety, some want 12 of one kind.
Now and then, she is asked if she can provide one cookie.
No, she doesn't understand that, either. Cravings are strange like that.
"I have people message me, 'Do you have any chocolate chip cookies? I am really craving a cookie,'" she said laughing. "Occasionally, I can make that happen.
"It's hard to say no," she said to a cookie lover. And that includes Matt, whose favorite is chocolate chip.
She'll tell them to come by the house for a "porch pickup" if she has that cookie available.
Otherwise, swimming against the current today when every detail costs extra, the Pinsons deliver in town at no cost. If you live out yonder, it's $5. Fair enough with the gas price up and down.
OK, what's her fave?
Christine bakes to order. None of this baking on Tuesday for your little office party Friday. The lucky ones get a box with cookies still warm inside. That would be her choice.
Gourmet cookies are not shy about calories. So, people in groups often cut a cookie into sections - quarters, or even sixths - to share. They enjoy four cookies in one. How many more they eat after that is up to them.
"They're big cookies, and filling," Christine admitted. Each cookie goes about 4 inches in diameter.
Her favorite?
"I like cookies but I don't eat them that often," she said. Well, beyond the "testing phase" that attracts eager ones with the last name Pinson.
How, you ask, it is possible to just say no to a cookie begging to be eaten in your own kitchen?
Most could not.
"I have people who order weekly. Cookies is their thing," she said.
With the word out, customers include ACU students. Some out-of-town parents, seeing a complimentary posting on a parents' page, order a box as a treat for their student.
"When I was in college, if I could've gotten someone to deliver me homemade, fresh-baked cookies, that would've been great," Pinson said. "I like doing that for the students."
Cookies more easily offer variety, but picking just one, she goes with her Gooey Butter Oatmeal.
She is not an oatmeal cookie person and, she firmly stated, it'll be a cold day when she puts a raisin in a cookie.
But her adaptation of a something called "Crack Pie" from the famous Milk Bar NYC, to her, is the bomb. She made that pie at Thanksgiving and adapted it for a cookie.
It takes time to make, she said, but it has "a really yummy, twice-baked filling" and is worth the effort.
And there's the Strawberry Cake cookie, inspired by her mother, who made her a strawberry cake for her birthday.
Home, sweet kitchen
Christine works in her kitchen, though when a big order comes in, she rents the commercial kitchen at Highland. She can get more done there.
"For the most part, I am baking at home," she said. "I tend to have a lot of late nights, but baking is meditative for me. I do better when it's quiet. I can get a lot done a little bit easier.
"But that is not a sustainable schedule to keep, especially when you have four kids."
This fall, Max will be in a four-day-a-week preschool, and mom will have more time.
And, no, the boys have not been "hired" to help. She has a delivery driver named Matt.
"It's all her, right now," her husband said.
However, they are the first called to taste a new cookie.
Christine has made cookies for pop-up events at Grain Theory downtown. She enjoys the cold brew there and was inspired to make a coffee-flavored cookie that is good to the last ... dropped crumb. It's called "Cold Brew."
She also makes a Coffee Cake cookie that actually has crumbles on top.
And there's a cookie called Lavender Haze. Yes, inspired by the Taylor Swift song. More cool mom points.
She uses Grain Theory's house-made lavender syrup for that one.
She would like to do more collaborations with small businesses in Abilene.
What's ahead for Hey Sugar
"We're in a little bit of a transition phase right now," Pinson said.
If you are hankering for a cookie, better get your order in soon. Christine has graduation coming up, and then she is backing off baking so much this summer.
She wants to have some family time with school out, for starters.
Secondly, she needs a rest.
No break, no bake.
And another reason is to call a time-out on the Hey Sugar operation. It has gone way better than the Pinsons expected. She enjoys it but wants to keep enjoying it.
Matt and Christine need to map out the future of the kitchen enterprise. Maybe go more mobile to pop up more often around town.
Find out what's going to work out best in the long run," she said.
Staying busy, there's little time to pause to study the business.
She may have to abandon her own kitchen, and she might need to hire help.
Oh, she has had volunteers who say they would work for cookies, she said.
That's sweet, so to speak, but not a good business model.
Besides, only her husband works for free.
"I'm just so proud of her," Matt Pinson said. "I'm happy that she has found something that she's good at that makes other people's days.
"We've never run into anyone who has been sad to get cookies."
Now, what's this about being in a summer musical?
Christine Pinson's bachelor's degree is in theater.
She could not pass up a chance to be in "Sweeney Todd." The irony is that a woman who bakes cookies in real life landed the role of a woman who bakes, but not cookies, in this musical drama.
"It's one of my very favorite shows," she said, "and a bucket list role for me."
Mrs. Lovett, who becomes the revenge-minded barber's accomplice, has been played by Helena Bonham Carter (opposite Johnny Depp) and even Angela Lansbury, Emma Thompson and Patti LuPone.
Pretty good company to join.
A friend, Katie Hahn, is directing and other friends were auditioning.
"I at least wanted to audition," she said. "It was just one of those things like 'Oh, I really want to do it but I don't know how I can. But husband was like, 'You've got to do this. You're more alive and more yourself when you're able to do things like this.'"
And it's giving her Christine time. The last musical she was in was the Paramount Theatre's summer production of "Les Miserables." Jack had the role of Gavroche in that, at age 10.
"And now he's graduating, that's how long," she said. "It's going to be a couple of crazy months with graduation and rehearsals and trying to still work."
She received encouragement at home to audition, a pretty good Mother's Day gift from the boys.
Speaking of which, a perfect Mother's Day for mom, according to her husband, would be "some rest, some flowers and some good, quiet snuggles from her children.
"No, I am not going to ask her to make cookies."
Mom sings at church and has performed in two Paramount "Cabaret" fundraisers, but working with a theater troupe is a different process.
Pinson seemed destined to be Mrs. Lovett.
"She's a woman in her 40s who's kind of haggard and covered in flour and a little bit of blood," she said, laughing.
"That's basically me at any given moment."
How does this mile-a-minute mom make it work?
A supportive husband, she said, and her kids, who support mom in this latest challenge. Well, the older ones.
"My little ones don't ever want me to leave," she said, laughing.
"Even my teenagers have seen that I probably am a happier, more content, well-rounded person when I can do some of the things that feed my soul," she said.
And gives her a break from feeding the souls of those who crave a cookie.
"Sometimes, I look at myself, and say, 'What are you doing?' But to me, it's a form of hospitality. To bring someone a form of comfort."
Give them pause in their own mile-a-minute lives.
This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Hey Mom! Christine the cookie maker is Abilene's Shug
