From the little girl baking at her Nana’s side to a single mother packaging fresh-baked “kookies” for soldiers to the cancer survivor using kookies to thank her treatment team, the path to success has been a rocky road for Dr. Kyri Mosley. Today, Kyri’s Kookies enjoy significant popularity among renowned luxury hotels nationwide, including Hyatt Regency Atlanta, Grand Hyatt Buckhead, Marriott Marquis Atlanta, and Thompson Savannah. Moreover, the gourmet kookies packed with a “Hug in Every Bite” just found their way onto the 2023 list of Oprah Winfrey’s favorite things.
“I’m humbled daily by our brand’s success,” Dr. Mosley says. “God has allowed me to bake for people, and that is what I love most of all. It’s such an incredible blessing.”
Finding a passion for family time and fresh-baked kookies
As a little girl, Dr. Mosley vividly remembers looking down on tiny skyscrapers as her plane pulled away from Brooklyn and zoomed through puffy clouds toward her great-grandmother’s farm in Georgia. Excitedly, she fingered the Pan-Am wings pinned to her sailor dress and chewed spearmint gum to keep her ears from popping. Hours after landing, she found herself perched on a step stool in her Nana’s farmhouse kitchen, eagerly following instructions to bake her first homemade cake.
“It’s one of my fondest memories,” Dr. Mosley recalls. “We ground fresh flour from grain and creamed the butter by hand. I followed Nana’s instructions to add the eggs one by one and then the flour, beating all the while.”
Calling on the healing power of love and fresh-baked kookies
Thirty-five years later, Dr. Mosley moved to Georgia herself and desperately needed to return to the feel of those simple childhood days. In the upheaval of a painful divorce, her life felt chaotic and lonely.
“The end of my marriage was like a punch in the gut,” Dr. Mosley reflects. “I walked through days in a dream-like fog, feeling I had lost direction and purpose. I clung firmly to my children — Courtney and Jordan — while everything else in my life spun out of control.”
As reality twisted, Dr. Mosley’s once-cherished hopes morphed into bitter reflections, and she sensed fragments of herself slipping away. Eventually, she realized the necessity of redirecting the focus away from herself.
“I resolved to stop worrying about myself and concentrated on making other people happy,” says Dr. Mosley. “I reached out to friends serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to ask for the names of soldiers serving in their platoons and squadrons. That was the day my mission of spreading love through fresh-baked kookies began.”
Dr. Mosley took down her Whisper grain mill, called her 12-year-old son into the kitchen, and started baking from scratch. Together, they made loaves of banana, blueberry, pumpkin, and cinnamon bread, along with batch after batch of homemade kookies.
“Our house smelled like heaven as we packed coolers of treats for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” remarks Dr. Mosley. “Day by day, the expressions of appreciation and support that flooded in from the soldiers brought joy back to my broken spirit. Baking those kookies worked a wonderful healing in my heart.”
Three years later, Dr. Mosley returned to Brooklyn, New York, to take a job at a community hospital. There, she and her team tirelessly assisted patients diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. “That team seemed to work without stopping, and I never once heard anyone complain,” she recalls. “When I saw they were rarely thanked for their efforts, I resumed making kookies as a gesture of love and appreciation.”
News of Dr. Mosley’s gourmet kookies spread to every department of the hospital, and people lined up outside her office in hopes of a taste. For the next two years, friends and colleagues urged her repeatedly to stop giving her gourmet kookies away and start selling them before she finally gave in and started taking orders, which began flooding in.
During those days, Dr. Mosley worked a full day in Brooklyn, commuted two hours to her New Jersey home, and settled in for a long night of baking. “The schedule was exhausting,” she admits, “but making people happy with fresh-baked kookies made me happy, too.”
Healing leads to a new life journey and gourmet kookies for everyone
On October 8, 2019, Dr. Mosley received a devastating diagnosis of Stage 4 Ewing Sarcoma. “The outlook was not good,” she recalls. “Dr. Ramsey Joudeh, a friend and client, warned me that I was about to engage in the battle of my life. Fortunately, God and His perfect wisdom placed me in the hands of a wonderful medical team at Emory Sarcoma Institute in Atlanta, Georgia, led by Dr. William Read.”
Dr. Read said he was willing to fight alongside Dr. Mosley, but that the course of treatment would be intense. To have any hope of eliminating the sarcoma, she would have to stay in the hospital for five to seven days, receiving continuous chemotherapy infusions for periods of 80 to 120 hours.
During the initial procedure, Dr. Mosley had to come to grips with the loss of her hair. She chopped off 14 inches and gifted it to Locks of Love. After chemotherapy came six long weeks of Proton Radiation Therapy during the height of COVID-19.
Dr. Mosley’s life-and-death battle with stage-four cancer ended with a hard-won victory on May 22, 2020. To show her appreciation, Dr. Mosley presented her clinical team with “Thank You” kookies. Again, dozens of people urged her to start baking and selling her kookies full-time.
With her eagerness to share her renewed passion for baking, Dr. Mosley promptly reached out to her son and daughter, both of whom wholeheartedly supported her endeavor. Even her son, who had been pursuing his culinary passion in New York, returned to Georgia to contribute to the growth of Kyri’s Kookies. “After thoughtful prayer and reflection, I embraced my passion and embarked on the journey of baking Kookies once again in June of 2021”.
Standing in the beautiful bakery of her brick-and-mortar Kookie Kafé in Dallas, Georgia, Dr. Mosley relayed her Nana’s instructions to her 25-year-old son and knew she had come full circle. “Keep creaming the butter while you add the sugar. When the yellow butter turns white, beat it while you add eggs one by one. Always save the flour till last.”
While Dr. Mosley’s six-foot-six son may not need a step stool, the same family love and passion remain. “We have worked as a mother-and-son team since 2009,” she says, “and now I’m blessed to have my daughter here to help us, too. In our family, baking is an expression of love that has lasted generations.”
Kyri’s Kookies packages each dozen kookies in a one-of-a-kind wooden keepsake box. This woman-owned and black-owned business in the heart of small-town Dallas, Georgia, now serves some of the biggest worldwide hotel brands as well as the local community. And, of course, Dr. Mosley continues to send treats to encourage troops overseas, essential workers, and children and families impacted by cancer.