When Christmas morning rolls around, the warm smell of sugar cookies swirls through the kitchen of Hannah and Zach Welton. For Zach, the scent is a thread to his childhood, when he would sit with his mother and swipe icing onto the cookies she baked for his mid-December birthday. “When we first started dating, Zach would make his mom’s cookies,” Hannah says. “I made the icing, and we made it a family tradition. We do it every morning on Christmas day.”
When the couple was researching and developing their holiday menu at Welton’s Tiny Bakeshop in Charleston, South Carolina, they reached back to that recipe. “Zach’s mom’s sugar cookie is so pure, and it’s a beautiful basic. We put the classic Welton’s twist on it, browning the butter and adding Heilala vanilla extract for more dimension,” Hannah explains. The resulting recipe, shared below, is slightly nutty with a buttery crumb that melts on your tongue. “We can eat the batter raw, burnt, or baked,” she says.
To make it even more special, the team added a layer of buttercream spiced with Burlap and Barrel’s chai, which introduces flavors of cinnamon, cardamom, lemongrass, and orange peel. The cookie sandwich is a brand-new addition to the pastry case at Welton’s, which recently expanded into a larger building next door to its original home. “The day we signed the lease for the bakery, I told the landlord that if the next-door space ever became available, we wanted it,” Hannah says. Two years later, that opportunity arrived—and not a moment too soon.
Between daily long lines of eager customers and an itty-bitty kitchen, Welton’s had been “busting at the seams,” she says. The team of bakers would begin work at four in the morning, pulling treats from the oven, washing pastries, and filling danishes, but had to halt production four hours later to open doors. The new café grants all-day baking, a full coffee program with beans from Durham’s Counter Culture Coffee, and an expanded lunch menu with seasonal soups, sandwiches, and side salads. But even with more room, the space is equally cozy thanks to local designers Evan and Diego Gonzalez of Public Regard, who painted the sunlit front room a warm vanilla, laid down speckled terrazzo floors, and installed a curved bar of black walnut and Carrara marble to showcase tiers of sugar-dusted kouign-amanns, soppressata croissants drizzled with hot honey, and slices of the shop’s iconic honey pie.
Hannah’s most-wanted—and favorite—inclusion? Custom windows that open up to the bustle of King Street, where guests can look out while enjoying a hot cortado and those in line can catch a waft of what’s waiting inside.
