Antonia Vilardi, founder of Dough It Yourself, has scaled up her business into a commercial kitchen. Photo: Tenele Conway.
I’m a sucker for a short cut. Robot vacuum cleaners, dry shampoo and electric toothbrushes. Hell, I’m even a fan of meal kits; you can’t always eat like a food writer.
It just so happens that I have found a short cut that will keep me in the manner of food to which I’m accustomed and have my friends wondering when I became Nigella Lawson.
It’s ready-to-bake cookie dough from Canberra company Dough It Yourself.
Ready-to-make cookie dough certainly isn’t a new concept; it’s been on supermarket shelves for years now, but you haven’t had cookie dough like this.
Antonia Vilardi, owner and chief baker at Dough It Yourself, has only been making cookies for the past five years and has somehow, in that time, completely perfected the art.
“I wanted to create something that’s not only fun but also simple and satisfying to bake at home. Cookies have a timeless appeal,” Antonia tells Region.
Antonia has been making cookies for the past five years. Photo: Tenele Conway.
As well as mastering the cookies, building an online store, securing stockists around Canberra and moving into commercial production premises in Beard, Antonia has her domestic goddess routine down pat with multiple children to wrangle while she builds her business.
“It’s definitely a juggle, but being my own boss means I can build my schedule around my family’s needs. It’s not always easy, but being able to create my own schedule is definitely a huge advantage,” she says.
It’s a juggle that many working mothers can relate to and despite the hard work and coordinating many moving pieces, entrepreneurship is something Antonia would recommend for other women looking for more control over their schedule.
“Every journey has its ups and downs, but I think it’s great to be able to create something of your own.”
Antonia baking a batch of her choc chip cookies. Photo: Tenele Conway.
The move from home to a commercial space has allowed Antonia to separate those parts of her life and her kitchen in Beard is every baker’s dream.
Large fridges piled up with cookie dough, easy-to-clean surfaces, a commercial mixer and oven to help with consistency and reduce labour and right next door to the family catering business, The Merchants Feast, so she’s never alone out there.
The commercial space has also allowed Antonia to scale up production to supply her stockists and her online store, a process that did bring a new set of challenges.
“One of the biggest challenges was scaling production while preserving the ‘homemade’ quality of our cookie dough. Transitioning from small-batch market prep to larger-scale production took time, testing and a lot of trial and error,” explains Antonia.
Antonia tells a similar story to many business owners when she says she uses quality ingredients and “tests, tests, tests”, but in her case, that work and quality are undeniable. When I opened my first pack of chocolate chip cookie dough and took a nibble of the uncooked dough, I knew I was in for a treat.
Dough It Yourself also delivers cooked cookies. Photo: Supplied.
Quite a few more dough nibbles happened before my rolled-out cookies made it into the oven and while I patiently waited the 10 minutes for them to cook, I messaged Antonia with a rebranding idea; this would absolutely sell as a snacking log, no baking required.
I baked off a few more flavours over the following weeks. The process of chopping chunks off the log, hand-rolling them into balls and popping them in the oven could not be easier and what comes out of your oven at the end is, quite frankly, diet-stopping.
You aren’t going to eat just one of these; you may not even follow the instructions to wait for them to cool. These are buttery, chewy and generous in their usage of chocolate chunks.
In a mission to try all the flavours, I shared my newfound Nigella prowess, which had come to me via Antonia, with friends.
I didn’t ask for opinions or reviews; I just left them on countertops as a gift of cookies from a friend. Unprompted, each person I gifted them to came back to me asking where they could buy these cookies.
You can buy these cookies on the Dough It Yourself website where you’ll also find a listing of stockists in the region.
