The inside story of West Palm Beach baker's quarter-pound cookies
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. The oversized cookies made by the West Palm Beach baker affectionately known as “La Gringuita” weigh in at more than a quarter-pound, their plump girth a tempting mystery for the expectant consumer.
The story of what’s inside La Gringuita’s distinctive cookies is also the story of what’s inside the baker herself, 28-year-old Caroline McGinley, equal parts youthful wanderlust, pluck and ambition, humility and humanity.
It is a travel story, a food story, an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a story that came without instructions or a recipe to follow. And it ends with cookies, which she sells all over South Florida, both freshly baked and as frozen dough ready to prepare at home.
In a recent visit to her new 400-square-foot kitchen in the West Palm Beach Warehouse District, the air fragrant with sugary warmth, McGinley spoke about how a young college history major who spoke no Spanish discovered a new side of herself in Spain and South America, and became La Gringuita, baker of extraordinary cookies.
THE CHEF
McGinley, born and raised in a foodie family in Jupiter, was a student at Saint Mary’s College, near South Bend, Indiana, when she signed up for a study-abroad program that took her to Seville, Spain. Eager to immerse herself and learn Spanish, the following year she found a job online in Santiago de Compostela, where a receptionist position at a hotel turned out to be a job washing dishes.
After graduation, she got certified to teach English as a second language and got a job in Montevideo, Uruguay, a country that was a mystery to her. She lived in a “residencia” with 15 other young men and women from Uruguay, Venezuela and Cuba, and began baking as her contribution to the group’s lively, guitar-enhanced meals.
In her second year in Montevideo, with a better-paying job and her own apartment, she began baking cookies as a side hustle, selling up to 30 a day through Instagram. She planned to open a bakery in the city and settle there. Then COVID-19 sent her back to the United States.
Since 2020, McGinley has been churning out 850 to 1,000 frozen gourmet cookies each week, which she delivers in her car to more than a dozen green markets and shops across South Florida.
If you are looking for freshly baked cookies, McGinley plans to open her kitchen for retail sales this summer, with limited hours Saturdays and Sundays. Check the La Gringuita Cookies Instagram for updates. For information on where to find La Gringuita Cookies, visit Gringuita-Cookies.com.
THE DISH
Each La Gringuita cookie begins as a stuffed and frozen ball of dough that weighs 4.5 ounces. Her four standard flavors are Brown Buttah (brown butter dough embedded with Ghirardelli cacao chips), the Jammy (vanilla dough filled with berry jam), El Churro (snickerdoodle dough stuffed with Argentinean dulce de leche) and Chocolate Soufflé (chocolate dough filled with chocolate soufflé). Seasonal flavors are added from time to time. Each bag includes four frozen cookies and costs roughly $15.
THE ENCOUNTER
While making dough for a batch of cookies in her West Palm Beach warehouse kitchen, McGinley spoke about how her travels taught her that she didn’t need to follow a particular recipe. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: So you had to leave the country to learn to make these cookies?
A: I just have always been obsessed with traveling. I knew I wanted to live out of the country. I did study abroad in college, was in Seville for a year, then I went back to Spain the summer before senior year of college to work in a hotel in Santiago de Compostela. That’s where I got proficient in Spanish, especially working in the hotel. Nobody spoke English. I found that job on Google, and was able to feel like a quote-unquote intern. I worked for free, but I got a free place to stay.
Q: Did you speak Spanish before your study abroad?
A: No, my first semester there not so much. I was taking classes only in Spanish, but they were beginner-level. Second semester I was like, “OK, I’m only going to make friends with Spaniards and I will learn Spanish.” … When I went to work in the hotel, I do remember the first time I made a joke in Spanish and I was like, “OK, I got it. I’m proficient.” (Laughs)
It was honestly such a pivotal moment for me. It was the first time in my life where I didn’t speak English every day. Only once a week when I Skyped my family. Anybody that has lived in a different country, or was born outside of the United States and moved to the United States, I feel like I can relate with that a lot more. Just being able to express your personality, your identity, it was a really big moment for me, not speaking English.
Q: Do you think you were treated differently because you were new to the country and didn’t speak the language?
A: Yeah, it was pretty ironic, because the job I had applied for as an intern, online it looked like more of a receptionist job. I had experience working in a hotel. Prior to that, I had a summer job at The Breakers, so I could handle that. But I ended up washing dishes. (Laughs) I was working 40 hours a week, and I was probably in the kitchen for 30 of those hours. I was basically a dishwasher.
The guy who was in charge of me … ended up quitting. So I ended up in charge of the kitchen. It was just breakfast, so not too crazy, but I was 20 or 21 years old and in charge of inventory, ordering new ingredients and training people, all in Spanish.
It was a really, really important moment for me, and being able to overcome all the challenges of having an accent, making grammatical errors. I can be a perfectionist sometimes, and nothing comes out perfect. But, yeah, I definitely enjoyed it.
Q: You end up in Montevideo. Why make cookies?
A: I first got to Montevideo … I had to find an apartment. I’d never been to the city before, and I ended up finding a dorm room, kind of like long-term hostels, which is very typical for students studying in the capital or young professionals like me who can’t afford an apartment. Uruguay was actually pretty expensive.
I ended up finding the residency in what would be Craigslist, basically. (Laughs) The roommates varied, but there were around 15. There were four beds per room. It was coed, but separated, one sex per room. There were more guys than girls.
“It was the first time I was baking, in my life, without using measuring cups. Up until that point I always followed recipes. Never strayed, never thought about straying.”
Most of my roommates were Uruguayan, but we also had a mixture of Venezuelans and one Cuban — and me, the only non-native Spanish speaker. I was definitely La Gringa to them. (Laughs) We definitely became very close. I feel like I could write a book on living in that residency.
Baking was what I could do and what I was good at. My roommates, some of them were amazing cooks, so I didn’t really contribute there. Growing up, my sister would cook dinner and I would make desserts. So that was what I knew to offer.
It was all kind of casual. It was the first time I was baking, in my life, without using measuring cups. Up until that point I always followed recipes. Never strayed, never thought about straying. My parents are phenomenal cooks, but they never think about straying from a recipe.
I was definitely influenced by my roommates — we just didn’t own measuring cups. (Laughs) So I was using coffee mugs for flour and actual tablespoons for measuring. I was learning how to feel the batters or the doughs, mixing by hand, to feel the textures and come up with my own creations and get a little bit of confidence there.
Q: At some point you began selling the cookies?
A: Again, I never was planning on selling them. I stayed (in that job) for just a year. I was working 12-hour days and over 30 classes a week. My second year there, I ended up teaching a student one on one. She had special needs, so I ended up teaching her at the (Uruguayan) American School in Montevideo.
I was making a little more money, living in a studio apartment. I would get home around 1, and that’s when I was selling cookies. I had a whole full-blown side business, right through Instagram.
In the beginning, I was delivering. I would hop on a bus with a box full of cookies. I went all over the city. Then I figured out I would have pickup orders directly from my apartment. I figured out how to do targeted Instagram ads and I would target people who lived within a 2-mile radius of my apartment and then I had orders every day, Monday to Friday. I would sell about 30 cookies on a good day.
I was making the dough on the weekends and freezing them. When I got an order, I would bake them 15-20 minutes before the pickup, so they were always really warm. And that was my selling point. My entire apartment and all of my clothes all smelled like sugar. (Laughs)
Q: Your cookies are distinctive, both in flavor and shape and size. How did they get that way?
A: The ones that you see now, they are the perfected versions of the ones that I was selling in Montevideo. Going back to when I was living in the residency and not following recipes, that really did help. It just gave me confidence to try different things. I think I realized that I don’t need to follow a recipe. I’m going to listen to my gut.
It took me a long time to come up with the doughs, because I wanted them a certain texture. I wanted them to be thick and not spread, and I wanted them to be able to sustain the filling. Especially coming up with my vanilla dough, for the Jammy, with the berry jam. It’s a really liquidy center, and it can’t just turn into a pancake. It needs to hold its form.
Q: Do you have a favorite moment from your time in Uruguay?
A: I matured and transformed so much as a person in those two short years. Everything that happened when I was there was important and was impactful for me. A lot of it was really hard, and not always the happiest. But when you’re in your early 20s and trying to figure out who you are, and then having to do that in a different country and a different language definitely adds to the complexity. I’m a really weird person where I like to put myself in challenging circumstances because it always forces me to grow.
Q: Did you find out who you are?
A: I’m still working on it. (Laughs) I’m most proud of being able to speak Spanish, being able to communicate with people who don’t speak English. For example, my assistant, Luis, who has been with me for about two years now, he doesn’t speak any English and he is probably my favorite person. He is the most beautiful soul ever, and I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with him if I didn’t speak his language.
Q: Teaching English in South America is a special calling. Where did that instinct come from?
A: I don’t think I knew I would be talented in teaching, but I knew I wanted to travel and I actually found that I love teaching while I was there. I really connected with my students, but also with the other teachers that I was collaborating with.
Then, my second year, another really transformational experience for me was teaching my girl with special needs, who I still see when she comes to Miami about twice a year … I created such a strong bond with her, that also really helps me become a better person.
Q: OK, the nickname. Where did La Gringuita come from?
A: I went backpacking before the pandemic. I visited Colombia and Peru on a monthlong solo backpacking trip. It’s a long story, but my mom’s best friend from childhood’s cousin is Peruvian, so I stayed in her apartment in Lima for a couple of weeks. They really took me in and she was the one that called me La Gringuita. (Translation: little white girl.) … I was already selling cookies at that point and I was looking for a good name. It did kind of bother me when people called me “la gringa,” because it wasn’t always a nice thing to say. So it was kind of me making it my own.
