These Local Baking Kits Are SoCal Sweet

There's a reason that fragrance makers try to replicate the smell of goodies that have been in the oven for fifteen minutes: The warm, doughy, delightful smell is a universal people-pleaser.

But even more please-able? When you mitt-up and slide the sheet out, the one covered in cookies or cupcakes or those cookies that boast the consistency of a classic cupcake, only in flatter cookie form.

A number of Southern California sweet-makers have been there for us on the treat-needing front for several happy years now, and they're going even further to address our dessert hankerings during these stay-at-home days.

How? By creating baking kits, the sort of boxed-up, ready-to-go munchables that just require a few kitchen steps, such as mixing, and some quality time in the oven.

Cake Monkey has a number of baking kits for sale, including one that's all about Sticky Toffee Blondies. They've got more on the way in the coming days, and you can pick up your kit or have it delivered. The prices? They run from $28 to $45.

Coolhaus also has cookie-baking kits available via Postmates and Ubereats. They're $15 a pop, and here's a tasty twist: If you want to make an ice cream sandwich, you can also purchase a pint of something scoopable.

Jon & Vinny's kits cover the cookie spectrum, and people who are into cookie pie should definitely check out their offerings. At Atwater Village's Village Bakery? "The Great Village Bake-off Kit" is spotlighting a different cookie flavor each week.

And adding to its well-known bread-starter kits? There is Mr. Holmes Bakehouse, in Highland Park, which now has a kit to give chocolate chip cookie pros a jump on the whole baking process.

Kits, we do love you. You're somewhere between getting all of the ingredients together, like flour and sugar, for a cookie extravaganza, and eating a pre-baked cookie from a package.

That in-between place, the middle place, is as yummy as ice cream squashed between two recently baked discs o' delight.