By Shelley Widhalm
The Surveyor

When it comes to her custom cookies, Donna Talafuse of Berthoud hears over and over that they look too pretty to eat.
“I want them to not just be a pretty cookie, I want them to be a yummy cookie,” Talafuse said. “I want to make them flavorful and moist, and I want people to enjoy them.”
Talafuse came up with the name of her home-based business, LuLu’s Yummy Cookies, based on the yummy factor and one of her nicknames, LuLu. Her late mother named her Donnalu, and two of her grandchildren call her Mommalu, a name she also has on her license plate. Her other two grandchildren call her LuLu.
“My youngest is three. She asks, ‘LuLu, did you bring me cookies?’” Talafuse said. “I’m Mommalu or LuLu. They say my cookies are yummy. So it seems to be perfect.”
Talafuse opened LuLu’s Yummy Cookies on Sept. 1, selling her cookies as a cottage business through Facebook and Instagram. Her customers order the cookies, then typically pick them up, but she will deliver or ship them for a fee — she prefers not to ship them, since they can be fragile and require lots of packaging.
Talafuse also sells her cookies at events, her first in early November during the Mile High Holiday Mart presented by the Junior League of Denver. At that event, she brought along 870 cookies and came home with 25. So far, she’s sold more than 1,600 cookies from October to December, and she has orders lined up through May.
“I love sharing them with other people,” Talafuse said, adding that she likes to draw and can represent images by observing, not from her mind. “It’s like my art I can do on a cookie.”
Talafuse’s cookies come in 20 different flavors of sugar cookies, such as butter vanilla (a regular sugar cookie but more buttery), almond, strawberry, caramel, chocolate brownie, crème brulée, cinnamon bun, orange creamsicle and salted lime. Her icing has a soft bite, unlike some of the hard frostings that can be found on cookies, and the cookies can be custom-made. They range in size from two to five inches and come in shapes like circles and other geometric shapes, hearts, animals, plants, flowers, numbers and the typical seasonal and holiday shapes.
“The price depends on the size, details and colors,” Talafuse said. “Mixing takes time. The detail takes time.”
Cookies can be ordered for a number of occasions, such as birthday parties, weddings, showers, engagements, office parties and holiday events.
“I’m sharing it with other people,” Talafuse said. “I wouldn’t do this if it didn’t put smiles on other people’s faces. It’s a passion for other people, giving them this gift of having this little cookie that brings them joy. It’s my art expression on a cookie.”
Before making cookies, Talafuse was an air traffic controller for 20 years until she retired in 2009, then in 2011, she started selling real estate with her husband, Paul, through Keller Williams Realty.
For more information about LuLu’s Yummy Cookies, contact Talafuse at [email protected] or 970-222-9381. She can be contacted for orders via Facebook Messenger or email.