The Sophian

Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Features

Since the Tyler House dining hall started closing at 8:30 p.m. on weeknights, Smith students have only had the Campus Center Café and vending machines to choose from when it comes to late-night dining.

The Café certainly does its job. Sports teams returning from practice order pizza and Snapple with abandon, and even the most health-conscious among us would have a hard time turning down a dish of Spicy Trax.

Yet, there is a decided need for more late-night dining options, and that is where Kristine Salters '10 comes in. The biochemistry major, who transferred to Smith her sophomore year, recently launched a milk-and-cookies delivery service after noticing the lack of fresh made-to-order sweets at the school.

The service, which currently operates on Monday and Wednesday nights from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m., features three varieties of cookies that Salters bakes just minutes before delivering the still-warm treats: the "All-Nighter," a cookie made mostly from whole-wheat flour, peanut butter, oats and chocolate; chocolate and espresso; and a chocolate chip cookie recipe Salters originally borrowed from a Toll House cookie jar and has been modifying ever since.

Salters, who spent the past summer maintaining the gardens of a Boston-area country club, said that the idea occurred to her while hanging out in a friend's room. "I spent a good part of my day by myself, and I would just come up with things," she said.

The Bostonian formally launched the delivery service in October, after dragging her feet in September and eating an entire batch of cookie dough. "I realized I needed to get my act together," she concluded with a smile.

"[I have] always been a designer, and I would decorate cakes and stuff," Salters said. "I always have been a disciple of Martha Stewart. She's really awkward but influential."

Salters bakes all of her cookies in the student kitchen in the Campus Center the moment an order is placed either on her Web site or on Facebook. After making sure the cookies are "cool enough not to fall apart and melting into each other," she places the treats in a paper bag inscribed with the "M & C" logo and sets them in the back of her $16 bike before pedaling off to deliver her wares.

Students can also purchase a glass of cold milk, courtesy of Mapleline Farms in Hadley. Salters plans in the future to provide clean jam or salsa jars for milk, but noted that "students haven't had a problem with providing their own cups."

Although the self-professed sweet tooth has tried to make her cookies as healthy as possible, she has found that students prefer butter to margarine, and shared that the most popular cookie had been the chocolate chip. She purchases the ingredients for her cookies from the Co-op, River Valley Market and Cornucopia.

"I've been having a lot of fun delivering [the cookies] to people," Salters said. "Some people are high I think, so they're very happy to get them."

Salters charges $1 per cookie and a 25-cent delivery charge, with a two-cookie minimum. A glass of milk costs 75 cents. Visit tinyurl.com/smithmc for more information.

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