Former news anchor blends love of baking for new cookie-based career

Michele Kane says she has the recipe for success. Make that more than a dozen recipes.

Kane, a former TV news anchor and Summerlin-area resident, launched her own brand of cookies, Mrs. Kane’s Cookies, in May.

She said she’s all about “baking the absolute best and wildest flavors of chocolate chip cookies that you’ve ever tasted.” At last count, she had about 16 varieties.

“One of my proudest moments was when a guy who tried to resist eating my cookies said that I was the devil,” she said.

Kane comes from a background ripe in the European baking tradition. A former news reporter, she co-anchored the news on Channel 13 with Steve Schorr. Long before the cookie company idea sparked, she was known for bringing in her baked goodies.

“Michele, even back then, was the cookie person,” said Schorr, now vice president of marketing, community and government affairs for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, View’s parent paper. He recalled that when Kane brought in her cookies, her popularity soared.

The idea to make it a business began about 2½ years ago when her husband, Jon, was working as a stagehand for a show from out of town. Per the contract, the cast was put up in one of the hotels, without the touches of home. Kane was dabbling with the idea of starting the business and decided to send her husband to work with cookies for everyone on the show. That’s when she knew she was on the right track — everyone raved over the cookies.

“I was experimenting with flavors at the time. … Lemon bars became lemon cookies,” she said. “Most people like red velvet, but red velvet, to me, red is not a flavor. Raspberry is a flavor, so I (developed) a raspberry red velvet chocolate chip cookie recipe. Long, descriptive names, that’s part of my schtick.”

Her freelance work as a CBS field producer and news correspondent interrupted launching the cookie business until a friend advised her to just “do it already.” Kane got her business license and tax ID and shored up other necessary legal details. Perhaps there was a reason she hadn’t acted on her desire to start Mrs. Kane’s Cookies earlier.

“As of one year ago, in July, it was (made legal) to operate a baking business from home,” Kane said.

She took the recipes, handed down by her grandmothers, and intensified the flavors, tweaking the ingredients. She utilized the European techniques, strictly trade secrets, to bring out the flavors.

“They’re an infusion of American, European and my own insanity,” she said, adding that intensifying the flavors meant cookies that would stand out in any market.

All of the cookies she’s developed have chocolate — white, dark, various types of milk chocolate. Her preferred brand is Guittard, out of San Francisco. All her recipes have nuts of one variety or another, finely ground to be indiscernible to the eye.

“My husband, while he enjoys having walnuts or whatever, he didn’t like the texture in food,” she said. “A lot of people don’t. They like a smooth texture to the dough, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to get them in there somehow, so I’m going to do what my mother and grandmother used to do.’ “

It can take up to three months to fine-tune a recipe, which means taste testing her own handiwork before having others try it.

She got her website operating and decided to market locally at first. She offers local delivery.

“One of the things I’ve learned (from watching others) is that if you expand too fast, you’re going to go under,” she said.

She crafts the cookies in her small kitchen, using her consumer-grade KitchenAid mixer and home oven. She makes at least 12 dozen a week and hopes to be in a professional kitchen within a year.

For more information, visit mrskanescookies.com.

Contact Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 702-387-2949.