My identical twin sister and I have always bonded over baking. We both have undeniable sweet tooths and are constantly in need of a sugar fix. Cookies, in particular, have forever been our favorite treat to bake and eat together —especially if peppermint, peanut butter or chocolate chips are involved. So, I’ve wondered for a long time if twinship and baking had some kind of natural link.
This curiosity led me to reach out to Aria and Maya Christian, twin sisters and co-founders of the popular elite cookie business Twins That Cook. Who better to ask about the connection between twinship and baking than a pair of professional twin bakers?
A Partnership That Clicked
“Having a twin means having more ideas and thoughts. Two things that are so necessary in baking,” says Maya, who currently calls Los Angeles home.
“[B]ecause we’re so close and understand each other, it makes it so easy to express ourselves and even be overly transparent. We know each other’s strengths, and it allows us to have specific roles and really balance each other out,” adds Aria, who is based in New York.
This sounds like the perfect recipe for a successful business, but the twins admit that working together as partners previously wasn’t quite as successful as with Twins That Cook.
In Aria’s words, “We’ve worked together on other things that didn’t particularly feel as natural as this in regard to partnership. [It’s] just ironic that it’s baking, but with anything that’s a perfect pairing… you have to try a bunch of things that [don’t] work so you can realize and stick with the thing that does.”
No Irony in This Twin Business Venture
I wondered just how ironic it was that baking was the shared activity the twins ultimately found to be a successfully shared business endeavor.
In a recent post on their website, the team of the popular virtual cooking class company The Chef & The Dish wrote, “Michael Pollan’s Netflix series ‘Cooked’ wisely stated the art of cooking is in the very foundation that makes us human. One of the core differences in the human species is our enjoyment of food. If cooking is in the very foundation of being human, then working together toward that shared enjoyment of eating is in the very foundation of what establishes human bond.”
In this light, it makes sense that working together to create their self-proclaimed “Cookies for Elite Tastebuds” would help strengthen Maya and Aria’s twin bond, making them an unbeatable duo.
How Twins That Cook All Began
So, where did Aria and Maya’s interest in baking initiate? They grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, and say baking was always a part of their lives. Their grandmother and father loved to bake, but according to Maya, their love of baking can be traced back to a once uber-popular children’s toy.
“Aria and I knew we would love baking once we got our first [Easy Bake Oven]. I can still smell the brownies. [Easy Bake Oven] taught us everything we know!” she says.
Unlike my family, twins are not a frequent occurrence in Maya and Aria’s family tree. “Twins don’t run in our family, so we always felt extra special growing up,” says Aria.
Aria, a musician, and Maya, a mixologist and jewelry designer, say they started their Twins That Cook business at the height of the pandemic.
“We actually started off with food…main courses, and one day posted cookies and that’s what people responded to. And also a product that’s easy to make in bulk and share,” says Aria.
“We felt we had the time [during the pandemic] to really dive in head first and start a company. We had time to do the homework, to practice, to fail and try again, and because we love food so much, we really felt ‘now is the time to work together on something we both love,” adds Maya.
A Twin Bond Makes for Unique Cookie Recipes
I was also curious about how Aria and Maya’s twin bond made for not only a natural business partnership but also unique cookie recipes. In the caption of a recent post on their Instagram page, they write, “Just because we’re TWINS doesn’t mean we’re the same!! In creating our company we made the perfect cookie by blending our favorite kind of cookie textures together!”
I asked them to tell me more about this perfect blend.
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“Maya and I taste-wise are pretty much the exact same when it comes to sweets. It’s the textures where we differ…I think that’s why we work well because it’s half of me and half of Maya,” says Aria.
“Aria loves to break up sweets with a little salt, and I usually tend to just have the sweets. But we blended a little sea salt [into our cookie recipes] to cut the sweetness,” Maya adds.
Taste-Testing Twins that Cook Cookies
After talking to Maya and Aria, there were two things I knew I had to do: chat with my twin about the sisters’ thoughts on baking, and test out one of their elite cookie recipes in my kitchen.
Unsurprisingly, my sister agrees with the twin bakers regarding the logic of twins making good baking partners. “Baking with someone, like any collaboration, requires the ability to complement one’s partner,” she says. “With a non-twin partner, this is something that you might need to pan in advance; with twins, we naturally complement each other, so baking is effortless teamwork.”
So, how effortless is the twins’ “Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies” recipe? And did I feel extra twin-like while baking and eating it?
I can wholeheartedly confirm that the cookies offer the perfect mix of saltiness and sweetness and an explosion of chocolate, unlike any other chocolate chip cookie I’ve tasted recently. And they’re neither too gooey nor too crunchy.
Magic in the Batter
Say what you will about the success of the Twins That Cook brand, but I will forever be convinced that Aria and Maya’s twin bond has made for cookies that are unbeatable in taste and memorability.
In Maya’s words, “I like when people assume we have superpowers.” And maybe that’s what it boils down to. There’s a bit of magic embedded in the batter when twins bake together.
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Want to try the twins’ cookies? You can order online on their website. And they promise that if you follow them on Instagram, you’ll be the first to know when they have an event or popup.
“We do local deliveries in NYC as well. [Mainly Brooklyn] shoot us a DM or request via the submission form on our site,” says Maya.
And when you place your order, they recommend trying one of their fan favorites: The O.G. (a variation of the brown butter chocolate chip cookies I baked above) or a recent favorite Raisin the Roof —their newest cookie, which they say is a close second these days with fans.
