MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Christine K. Brooks, owner of Sweet Domestics LLC Our Coverage Sponsored by Original Hawaiian Chocolate

Christine K. Brooks

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People love making gingerbread houses at any age, and Christine Brooks makes sweet dreams come true, and has transformed her passion for creativity and innovation into a charming gingerbread house cookie cutter kit so that you can make sweet dreams come true too. Christine, the owner of Sweet Domestics in West Hartford Connecticut, was captivated by gingerbread houses as a child, and wanted her own children to experience the wonders of gingerbread houses. She created her own gingerbread house cookie cutter design in 1989. A tradition was born, and memories were made over the years that her gingerbread house party grew to include family, friends, and neighbors. In 2006 she created the Spicebrook Forest™ Gingerbread House Cookie Cutter Kit to share the experience with families across the country. Her recipe for fun includes her charming gingerbread house cookie cutter set, easy recipes, and dazzling candy assortments. Just add people and let the fun begin!

Thousands have enjoyed the Spicebrook Forest™ Gingerbread House Party experience, all year round. Personal comments reveal the magic involved: “I love making my own gingerbread house because I can make it just the way I want.” “Can you show me how you made that pink flamingo?” “I wish I could live in my gingerbread house.” Take a dream, a pinch of imagination, and a spark of innovation - then apply icing to some candies, and cookies, and sweet dreams come true!

Christine is passionate about bringing people together and creating opportunities to exercise their imagination, creativity, and ability to innovate – individually and cooperatively. Not only is her unique experience of flowing in the creative process fun, developing our mental capacity to innovate is an essential skill in creating our future.

Christine’s passion for innovation – rooted in her experience as an educator, developed as she explored improvisational music, dance, painting, writing, storytelling, furniture design, gardening, and cooking. Being an entrepreneur allows her to engage all of her creative talents to craft business solutions through innovative thinking.  We are so pleased to interview Christine as our latest Mover and Shaker! Peachy Deegan interviewed Christine Brooks for Whom You Know.

Peachy Deegan: What is your first baking memory?

Christine Brooks: 

What a great question! When I was about 2 years old my parents, who were immigrants from Poland after WWII, bought a new rug for our living room. It had a short pile with a brown, cranberry, and cream spiral pattern. My older sister and brother and I thought it looked like the waves of an ocean, so we emptied some drawers and filled them with our favorite things and pretended that we were sailing on the ocean in our drawer boats. We played on the rug all day, swimming across the spiral rug ocean to each other’s ships. By the end of the afternoon we wanted to celebrate the new rug by making our favorite food, which was Kluski (a homemade noodle). We knew exactly how to make them because we had watched my mother make them so many times. It happened that she went out on the porch to visit with a neighbor or to hang the clothes on the clothesline and we wanted to surprise her with Kluski. So we quickly took out the flour and made a mountain of flour - just like our mother. Then we made a crater in the top like a volcano, cracked two eggs into the crater, and poured some water into the crater and stirred it with two fingers - just like our mother. When we were kneading the dough, we noticed that it wasn’t coming out like her dough. Her dough was always smooth and satiny and our dough was lumpy. It was also very fuzzy. In trying to understand why, we realized that she always made her Kluski on the kitchen table, but we made our Kluski on the new rug.

Do you have any competition in the gingerbread market?

Most of my competition is from companies that offer pre-baked gingerbread house cookies (Monaco Baking Company, Dancing Deer, Wilton, and others). The pre-baked kits range in price from $9.95 to $49.95 for one house. My kit makes 7 gingerbread houses and comes with easy recipes for cookie dough and royal icing, so you can make hundreds of freshly baked gingerbread house cookies with no preservatives, and my kit retails for $24.95. There are a couple of other companies that offer a rudimentary cookie cutter kit, but I believe their cookie cutters are made in China. Those kits usually include about 3 or 4 cookie cutters for the house. My kit has 13 cookie cutters, plus an instruction booklet that I wrote where I share everything that I have learned about gingerbread house making since I designed my first cookie cutters for my daughters in 1989. It tells you everything you need to know about making gingerbread houses as well as how to have a gingerbread house party. It also has lovely photographs of whimsical, gingerbread houses that you can make any time of year.

What other creative endeavors do you participate in?

I believe that daily life offers endless opportunities to be creative. Creativity determines how we see the world. It comes out in the words we choose when we speak to others, how we solve problems, the relationships we create, and the food we cook. Fundamentally, it requires an open mind that is free from the limitations of our pre-conceived notions of how we think things should be. Creativity is going beyond what we know in order to discover new possibilities. It is a process of transforming whatever we have to work with into something new. I have explored this open minded creative process through engaging in a variety of activities. I love to cook and bake and I have learned to cook Polish, Thai, Indian, Sri Lankan, Jamaican, Tibetan, Italian, French, Hispanic, and Korean foods from various friends from those countries. I am also exploring Vegan and gluten free cooking too. I start with an understanding of the basic elements of each cuisine and make up my own dishes as I go along based on what I have in my kitchen. I also love to do storytelling, interior decorative painting, gardening, quilting, sewing, writing, and improvisational cello, and dance.

What are your favorite aspects of Connecticut?

My favorite aspect of Connecticut is the ethnic and cultural diversity of the people in Connecticut. In my view, that is the greatest wealth of this State. As a result of this diversity, there are many Asian, Indian, Portuguese, Jamaican, Italian, Polish, Hispanic, and European grocery stores where I can shop for specialty foods and spices, and meet many wonderful people from around the world. I live in a vibrant community of intellectually and physically active people, that value education, the arts, and ethnic and cultural diversity. I appreciate the warm spirit of inclusion that is exhibited by all of these diverse communities.  

I also enjoy visiting various farms that provide an opportunity to pick-your-own fruits and vegetables. I pick strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, nectarines, pears, cherries, and apples of all kinds. Spending an afternoon in the orchard is one of my favorite things to do.

What does innovative thinking mean to you?

I love this question! Innovative thinking requires an open mind, that is free of intellectualization, conceptualization, and especially the personal critic. Freeing one’s mind in the is way allows the creative process to evolve without limitations. One of the things I love about watching people decorate their gingerbread houses is that anything is possible. Rule number one in my instruction booklet is that there are no rules! Innovation is being able to let go of our pre-conceived notions of how we think things should be, and to open up to new possibilities. Innovation is taking the raw materials before us and being able to discover new ways to use them. The raw materials of gingerbread house making include the cookies, candies, and icing, but the raw materials of life include learning the alphabet, how to read and write, understanding math and the sciences, knowing the scales on an instrument, the structure of music, language, color, movement, voice, and technology, and being able to use them in new ways to create new possibilities.

What or who has had the most influence on your pursuit of excellence?

I believe that studying Buddhism has had the greatest influence on my pursuit of excellence. The Dalai Lama often says that his religion is kindness. I believe that one of the most powerful things we can do is to be kind and compassionate to everyone.

What are you proudest of and why? 

I am proud of my two daughters, and my husband. They are great people and I am so fortunate to have them in my life.

What would you like to do professionally that you have not yet had the opportunity to do?

I have taught economics for many years, I would love to be able to research human capital utilization as it applies to community and economic development. I taught courses in the economics of poverty and would like to see more policies focusing on providing employment opportunities to people from all skill and educational levels so that all people have access to stable employment opportunities.

What honors and awards have you received in your profession?

I received an award of excellence from Chefs of America and Masters of Taste for my gingerbread house collection. My products were also featured in the Gourmet Housewares Magazine, and Toy Tips Magazine.

What is your favorite place to be in Manhattan? 

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What is your favorite shop in Manhattan? 

The Strand Book Store! I LOVE books. I could be lost in that store for days.

What is your favorite drink?

Since I am a marathon runner, my favorite drink is ProSport Max by Advantig.net. After running 18 miles or more, I feel as though I’ve been run over by a steamroller from head to toe. After drinking ProSport Max I am just about fully restored after about 20 or 30 minutes. By the afternoon I feel as though I could go out and run another 10 miles!

What is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you at a cocktail party?

When I was newly married, we invited my husband’s parents over for dinner for the first time. I was eager to make a good impression. I knew they enjoyed having a cocktail before dinner. So we purchased their favorite vermouth and gin to make martinis which were their favorite cocktail. My father-in-law showed me how to make them, and to be sociable I drank a martini too. I was so affected by the martini that I had a hard time getting our dinner of baked scallops and steamed green beans on the table! I learned never to drink a martini before I had finished preparing the meal.

What is your favorite restaurant in Manhattan? 

Petite Abielle

What is your favorite Manhattan book? 

All Available Boats: The Evacuation of Manhattan Island on September 11, 2001. The power of people caring about their fellow human beings in this book is so inspiring. It is an example of extraordinary human kindness.

Who would you like to be for a day and why? 

I’d like to be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, because she is amazing - intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, and effective. She is truly an extraordinary woman.

If you could have anything in Manhattan named after you what would it be and why? 

Central Park because it brings such pleasure to so many people in the city.

What has been your best Manhattan athletic experience? 

Watching the New York Marathon when my running partner’s sister was invited to run it as one of the elite women runners.

What is your favorite thing to do in Manhattan that you can do nowhere else? 

Visit the Museum of Natural History. I have always been fascinated by dinosaurs and evolution.

If you could have dinner with any person living or passed, who would it be and why? 

Yeats! I love his poetry.

What has been your best Manhattan art or music experience? 

Standing before Van Gough’s painting of a Starry Night at the Museum of Modern Art.

What do you personally do or what have you done to give back to the world?

I created my Spicebrook Forest Gingerbread House Collection so that families across the country could enjoy the experience of decorating gingerbread houses with their friends, family, and neighbors. It is a great way to build relationships, and to enjoy memories of special times with special people. Gingerbread house parties are more fun that I can possibly describe.

I have also donated my products to organizations such as the Girls Scouts, My Sister’s Place, the Arnette House in Ocala Florida, Toys for Tots, and Bridge2Peace. I also have volunteered to make gingerbread houses and host the Noah Webster House Annual Gingerbread House Day since 2006. We have had over 1,000 people come to make gingerbread houses at the event since we started!

What do you think is most underrated and overrated here? 

The most underrated thing about New York is the Taxicab drivers! They are from all over the world, and they often have amazing stories about how they came to this country, and about their families. I think Wall Street is overrated.

Other than Movers and Shakers of course, what is your favorite Whom You Know column and what do you like about it? 

I enjoy the awesome authors column. Getting a glimpse of the authors enhances my experience of reading their books.

Have you drank The Peachy Deegan yet and if not, why not? 

I haven’t tried it yet! I didn’t know about the Peachy Deegan the last time I was in New York!

What else should Whom You Know readers know about you? 

I am a marathon runner and have run 30 marathons since 2000. 

How would you like to be contacted by Whom You Know readers? 

I would like to invite Whom You Know readers to visit my web site: www.SweetDomestics.com and Email me at:Christine@SweetDomestics.com