Geno Zaharakis slides a cookie across the table. “We were baking and giving them away to everybody,” recounts his husband and business partner, Dustin Hoffman. “I said, we should try a farmer’s market! So we rented a tent and baked up some terrible cookies.” He grins. “If you don’t have a good chocolate chip cookie, go home.” These are not those first cookies.
The classic chocolate chip: caramelly at the edges, chewy through the soft-bellied center, rippled with milk and semi-sweet chocolate. Browned butter lends a nutty undertone; house-milled oat flour smoothes the crumb.
Beekman Bakes started in 2023 at the peninsula counter of a small apartment in Key West, says Zaharakis, with a five-quart mixer. The name came from Auntie Mame. “The apartment in the movie resembled ours; it was 3 Beekman Place,” Geno says. “So we started calling ourselves the Beekmans.” They spent “every waking moment until the first market” overhauling recipes, with friends and neighbors giving honest feedback. “We bought The Cookie Bible,” Hoffman recalls, then figured out butter and flour combinations. They slashed white sugar by three-quarters. “That completely changed them,” Hoffman says. “You can actually taste the vanilla.” Virginia peanut butter and white macadamia nut followed…