HAMPSTEAD — Kate Couture found the perfect equation last summer to balance her 18-year teaching career with a passion for baking.
She’s a math specialist at Hampstead Middle School who also runs a cookie and brownie business out of her Hampstead home, called O’Sweet! Bakeshop.
The at-home business opened July 2022 and is already gaining popularity in its flagship year.
Couture’s products fly out of baskets at Atkinson House of Pizza and can also be found at places like Sweet Baby Vineyard in Hampstead.
Her love of baking started at a young age.
At 9 years old, Couture baked brownies to be sent off in care packages to her older siblings in college.
Couture’s mom entrusted the kitchen to her, and let the little baker make sweet creations by herself.
Before her teaching career, Couture helped run cooking classes at Williams-Sonoma. After raising a family, she started taking those same classes.
Couture has enjoyed teaching for nearly two decades in Hampstead, she said, but concocting baked goods has always been a source of happiness.
A few years ago, born out of hardship, she decided to try to marry the two passions.
Couture and her sister became primary caretakers for their mother battling cancer in the mist of the COVID pandemic. It was a hectic time for Couture, who while grieving her mother’s death, ended up extremely sick herself with COVID.
Couture found it to be a dark period in her life as she dealt with her mother’s death and all that surrounded pandemic living.
A friend helped spark the bakery. They spoke about the importance of finding joys in life during hard times.
“I did some soul searching and realized that the one thing that brought me joy was spending time in my kitchen,” she said.
The math teacher researched New Hampshire “homestead food” laws to figure out how to sell baked goods that way.
New Hampshire laws allow the sale of non-perishable items such as baked goods, jams and coffees to be made out of a residence. Those items can also be sold to retail stores.
She registered her bakeshop as a limited liability company with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office and began selling cookies last summer.
“It really was to heal my heart,” Couture said. “The whole point of this bakery was for me to find joy and find my passion.”
Couture pitches a pop-up tent and sells her cookies periodically in her family’s front yard.
It’s become a family-business for the 51-year-old mother of two children.
Her husband handles the accounting. Her kids helped with the website and business logo design, which pays homage to her mother’s Irish roots with a shamrock and inspired the prefix for O’Sweet.
Couture’s family connection is seen in the cookies themselves and influenced by her parents’ favorite treats.
Her father inspired the hermit cookie, while the winter-flavored, cranberry pistachio white chocolate cookie highlights notes of her late mother’s favorite Christmas biscotti.
Couture’s middle school students also heavily influence the cookie creations – and get to be taste-testers.
“My students enjoy me bringing them the perfectly imperfect ones,” Couture said. “Occasionally I’ll bring some in and have them try the flavors. It’s fun for them.”
Chocolate chip is a staple, but Couture’s cookies also have fun ingredients like Oreos or Fruity Pebbles mixed into the dough. Her s’mores and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are also palate-pleasing hits.
She offers seasonal flavors and is currently baking hot chocolate peppermint and cranberry pistachio cookies.
Her pop-up bakeshop lets her balance her career and make the business as big or little as she wants, she said. There’s no pressure, just pure joy that she gets out of it and seeing people enjoy her treats as well.