An “inside look” at the colorful stuffed cookies offered by Oh High Bakery. For Women’s History Month, a portion of sales of a special six-pack box will support education of girls around the world.
Writer: Karla Walsh
Since 2019 Lesley Rish has co-owned Nosh Cafe & Eatery (424 E. Locust St.) with her friend Veronica Tessler. But she closed her other business, Dumpling Darling, last December due to the pandemic and the fact that “the numbers weren’t where they needed to be,” Rish says.
Within three years, she had grown her dumpling brand from food cart to two brick and mortar shops, plus Nosh. And her plate was overflowing: “It turned out that I could either go big or I could go home, but I couldn’t do both.”
So Rish took that literally, heading home to begin to develop a home-based business, Oh High Bakery. She spent a year testing a wide variety of flavors to perfect the brand’s signature stuffed cookies—filled with brownies, cheesecake, nut butter and beyond—which are now sold at Nosh and available via bulk orders online.
Her favorite? “The Wake N Bake, a chocolate and butterscotch chip cookie stuffed with espresso cream cheese,” she says. “We also have vegan and gluten-free variations of this.” Other fan favorites, she says, are the OH G (chocolate chip stuffed with brownie ) and the Red Eye (red velvet stuffed with Oreo cream cheese).
Oh High was born at the perfect time for Rish and Andrew Norton, “my life partner and business partner,” Rish says. “Andrew has a corporate day job and has a lot to bring to the table in terms of overall business strategy. My 6-year-old stepdaughter, Lila, is the head taste tester.”
Norton and Rish are expecting to welcome their first child home in July. Her little one is currently weighing in at roughly 6 ounces, “the same size as an Oh High cookie.”
This month, your cookie purchase will go further than simply pleasing your palate. For Women’s History Month, Oh High Bakery has launched a six-pack women’s cookie box, with 10% of sales going to the Malala Fund to support education for girls around the world. The treats inside each box are inspired by game-changing women past and present; for example, the Baby RBG cookie is made with chocolate chips, caramel chips and peanuts stuffed with caramel brownie and topped with a Baby Ruth bar. The packs are available for purchase online.
