DES PERES, Mo. — You could say love is the secret ingredient to Clank’s Cookies. That is true, but there is something else.
“I put vanilla pudding in it,” said Jane Tayon, Chief Cookie Maker.
It’s a chocolate chip cookie recipe with or without M&M’s that she has poured her heart into.
Jane just launched a business called Clank’s Cookies five months ago. Before she did that, she hired a baking consultant to make sure the cookies were as good as her friends said they were. That consultant told her she had a "goldmine."
While the business is new, she has been baking Clank’s Cookies for a long time. Both of Jane’s parents passed away by the time she was 18. That’s when a neighbor in Richmond Heights named Clank Wagner took her under his wing, making an offer she couldn’t refuse.
He told her that if she wanted to go to college, she could come work for him and he’d make sure she finished.
So, to thank him for the job doing factory work and for the ride he gave her to work every day, she baked Clank cookies.
She said, "He didn't give me money, he didn't give me a break, he gave me an opportunity and for that I'll be forever grateful. So, I made cookies to thank him and he was polite about it but he said, 'These aren't very good.'"
Clank’s feedback to the cookies only made them better and better over time. Meanwhile, Jane graduated from college like Clank said she would. Jane was also able to pay for tuition thanks to the job Clank gave her.
But the cookies kept coming.
"I baked him cookies for 40 years," said Tayon.
Clank died five years ago, but the cookie recipe lives on, and so does his legacy. This is so much more than a cookie.
She said, "It is just the sweetest story that a neighbor could just, in kindness, reach out... I think we have underestimated the value of encouragement."
Check out clankscookies.com.