When I was a boy, my grandmother, who was a phenomenal “country-cooking-at-its-finest cook” came to visit from North Carolina, she would bring me a large tin of homemade Toll House cookies. She brought more than one tin for the rest of the family, but this one was mine, and I carried them around with me until the last one was gone. My love for chocolate chip cookies knows no bounds.

Now I have Uncle Paul’s Cookies to satisfy my cravings. Paul Cooney, one of the head golf supervisors at the Lakewood Golf Club in Point Clear is the creator of Uncle Paul’s Cookies. More about the name later.

Paul grew up in Mobile and spent his summers on the Eastern Shore. He played golf as a kid but wasn’t too serious about it until around 2000. He graduated from McGill Institute in Mobile and later found himself in Orlando working at Disney World. His first job was driving a monorail. He also worked as an extra in Roy Scheider’s television series, Third Watch. That led to some photo shoots, and he even ended up on the cover of Time Magazine.

While in Orlando, Paul decided to get serious about golf, took the Players Ability Program, and began working in the golf business as a teacher and supervisor. He gravitated toward the supervisor career and worked in places like Reunion Resort Golf in Orlando, Beaver Creek Golf Club in Colorado, Reynold’s Plantation in Georgia, and the Robert Trent Jones Celebration Golf Club in the Disney-created town of Celebration, Florida.

Paul has been at Lakewood Golf Club for six years now and got into baking chocolate chip cookies on the side, refining his recipe, improving the ingredients, and perfecting the taste and health of the product. At the time, he was managing a men’s golf group at Lakewood, the Goofy Golfers, and word got out that Paul made homemade cookies. Requests started coming in and soon, the Lakewood Ladies Golf Association requested some. Then Niall Fraser, Director of Golf at Lakewood, requested some cookies and encouraged Paul to grow his fledgling business.

Paul got his food certification under the Cottage Food Law of Alabama and began baking cookies in the evenings to meet demand. People around the Lakewood Club began requesting cookies for family outings, business associates, and parties. Joe Bullard was his biggest fan, and he couldn’t keep them in stock.

Now that the secret is out, Paul bakes in the evenings several times a week.  One batch produces about four dozen cookies. During holidays, he ramps up baking almost every night. A two-dozen box of Uncle Paul’s Cookies is $55.His best seller is the dark chocolate chip, and he also bakes a popular white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. He’s working on some new flavors but isn’t ready to go public until the recipe meets his discerning standards.

Uncle Paul’s Cookies are now available at McKenzie Farm Market where he delivers ten to twelve bags twice a week. They sell out quickly. His biggest order came from a local realtor—300 cookies, six batches! By the way, the name comes from Paul’s namesake, his uncle in Minnesota. Paul shipped him some cookies and he “was ecstatic,” with the cookies and the name!

So now you know about Uncle Paul’s Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies and White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies. To request a special order, send Paul an email at pcooney72@gmail.com. I picked some up at McKenzie’s this week.