Baker Spotlight: Khadija Adams Seeks to Build Bridges Through Cookies
The founder of Deez Cookies talks about launching her micro bakery, plus local food news.
Khadija Adams Seeks to Build Bridges Through Cookies
By Erin Edwards
To Khadija Adams, the owner of the small-batch bakery Deez Cookies, baking isn’t just about creating some of the best cookies in Central Ohio.
If you buy one of her rotating themed cookie boxes, you may also learn a thing or two about a historical figure–such as Ella Baker, a Black civil rights activist–or even the Haitian Revolution. That’s because Adams uses flour, butter, chocolate chips and other joy-making ingredients as a medium for storytelling and as a way to build bridges.
Deez Cookies’ themed boxes always include literature that tells the stories behind the people who inspired the bakery items. March’s themed cookie box, for example, celebrates Women’s History Month with two cookies and a snack mix honoring three inspiring women: Ella Baker, Dr. Isabel Morgan and Ohio’s own Toni Morrison. Last month, Adams sold cookie boxes celebrating Black History Month and Mardi Gras.
“[Cookies] make you smile, and they make you bring your guard down. You do not feel like you are under threat,” Adams says. “That lowering of the guard, that experience of joy and comfort through food, I think, can also make people open to peering into worlds that are not the world that they are from. In that way, I think we’ve used cookies as a bridge-building tool, which fits who I’ve always been as a person.”
It All Started with a Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Cookie
Adams didn’t start baking until after she graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University and became a youth and young adult pastor. That’s when she discovered that baking was a way to connect with teenagers–and their grandmothers, too.
“It was a multi-generational church, and I would hang out with, like, the ‘old ladies lunch club’ every other Tuesday—I should find something nicer to call them, but that’s what they were. [I] started getting recipes from them and slowly started a love affair with baking.”
It was during this period of time when someone handed Adams a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie.
“Being from the Deep South, that was not a thing that I was familiar with at all,” says the New Orleans native. Adams found the cookie to be delicious but recalls thinking, “I don’t really believe in pumpkin as a person, but I bet a sweet potato version of this would be really cool.”
Adams continued to mess with the recipe for a sweet potato chocolate cookie “until it was cool,” she says, and for the next 15 years that cookie became the thing that Adams baked and brought to fall gatherings of friends and family.
“People would fight over them,” she says.
Fast forward to the pandemic. A longtime writer, Adams was suffering from postpartum depression and struggling to write her blog. “I had a baby in the middle of a global pandemic and no executive function for any type of writing except writing about cookies–and no creativity except cookies. So, cookies became my coping mechanism,” she says.
Then, the day after the 2020 election, friends started calling Adams and pleading with her to bake them something comforting during what was an uncertain time.
“They were like, ‘There are no election results. We are very afraid. We need to eat our feelings,’ ” Adams recalls them saying. “ ‘We’ll pick them up off the porch. We know we cannot come inside. Just get us what we need.’ ”
Adams bought an LLC to become a home baker and agreed to bake for her friends until the 2020 presidential election was called on Nov. 7. “I baked 30 dozen cookies,” Adams says, laughing.
That’s when she realized, “Maybe we have something here.”
Georgia on Her Mind
Also born out of the 2020 election was the cookie that led Adams to quit her 9-to-5 job and focus on growing her baking business. That cookie, dubbed Georgia on My Mind, is an ode to Stacey Abrams and her push for voting rights in The Peach State. The cookie features candied pecans on the outside and a peach coulis center. (It happens to be this writer’s favorite.)
“That was the thing that people bought, bit [into] and said, ‘Well, I think what you do now is you make cookies,’ ” she says.
Since then, Adams’ baking business has grown. In late 2023, she moved into a commissary kitchen at ECDI’s Food Fort. There, she has access to six ovens and has been able to learn from and collaborate with other food entrepreneurs.
And through some kind of divine intervention (and the help of a loyal customer), Adams has even gotten one of her baked goods into the hands of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, to whom Adams bears a striking resemblance. Adams even has a thank you card to prove it.
Ketanji’s Supremely Salted Caramel Brownie started out as a joke when Adams decided to make a cookie featuring her own favorite flavors and name it after her famous doppelgänger.
“We’ll just carry it through the confirmation hearing as a wink, nudge, joke,” Adams recalls thinking at the time. “Well, the cookie is delicious, and so it’s never come off the menu.”
Deez Navigates the DEI Backlash
Adams’ identity-based storytelling approach has led to some unique challenges, especially amid the Trump administration’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Adams says February 2025 was her company’s worst Black History Month in terms of sales–though she saw slight improvement this year.
“The national deemphasis on DEI has significantly impacted our corporate sales,” Adams says. “In 2024, I think we sold something like 80 Black History Month dozens to corporate partners. In 2025, I think we sold seven. So, we deeply experienced the spirit of complying [with the administration] in advance.”
Today, corporate sales make up about a third of Adams’ business–down from 60 percent–with individual sales, public events (like farmers markets) and small catering orders making up the balance.
You can get your hands on Deez Cookies by ordering them online here; Adams offers nationwide shipping, pickup or delivery (within 10 miles of Downtown Columbus).
You can also find Deez at local farmers markets, including all season long at the Franklin Park Conservatory Farmers Market (starting June 3). Adams also plans to pop up at the Clintonville and Upper Arlington farmers markets as well as Jeni’s Strawberry Jam (May 24-25) and the Columbus Book Festival (July 11-12).
Notes
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
The hometown pizzeria Mikey’s Late Night Slice plans to replace the Grandview sports bar Homefield at 1312 Grandview Ave. Homefield remains open but plans to relocate to Marysville this year.
The popular bookshop and vegan cafe Two Dollar Radio Headquarters (1124 Parsons Ave.) is for sale. Its owners, Eric Obenauf and Eliza Jane Wood-Obenauf, announced they are open to a full acquisition of the brick-and-mortar business or a collective ownership model.
The growing South Indian restaurant chain Simply South plans to open its first Ohio location in Polaris on Lyra Drive. The Texas-based restaurant specializes in vegetarian cuisine, including a variety of dosas, poori, pullattu, curries and much more. In 2024, Simply South’s location in Irving, Texas, landed on The New York Times 50 Best Restaurants list.