Pictured: Salted Dark Chocolate Shortbread and Classic Chocolate Chip Cookie spreading joy from Beekman Bakes market booth. Photo by Alex Alfaro.

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.

They get creative with the shortbread, which Zaharakis dubs “the adult cookie.” The turbinado sugar crust cracks first, then the cookie crumbles, tender and buttery. The salted dark chocolate— 70%— is their most craved; a version with orange comes scented with fresh zest. Rosemary or lemon-lavender pairs well with wine.

Amongst many ventures, the husbands ran a cocktail bar together in Chicago. “Restaurant brats,” Zaharakis says. “We love people.” Now in their fourth season, they craft 120 cookies every sixteen minutes at Bakery Pro Kitchen, an incubator for bakers on Cortez Road. In Key West, baking took fifteen hours, a dozen at a time.

An online store launches in August: the Beekman Dozen, baked and shipped the same day, limited quantities to keep the small-batch quality. “It’s a make-your-own cookie flight,” Zaharakis says. Look for the orange checkered booth at the farmers’ markets. “We really have the best job in the world,” says Hoffman, “because everybody's like, ‘Yay, a cookie.’”

Beekman Bakes, Sat 7 a.m.- 1 p.m., Sarasota Farmers Market, Sun 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Lakewood Ranch Farmers Market, 630-621-8090, beekmanbakes.com

Pictured: Salted Dark Chocolate Shortbread and Classic Chocolate Chip Cookie spreading joy from Beekman Bakes market booth. Photo by Alex Alfaro.