Homemade Cookies at the Cerritos Farmers Market

Tameka Rikondja wakes up at 1:45 a.m. every Saturday—not necessarily because she’s a morning person, but because she is up to bake over 200 of her homemade cookies that sell out every week at the Cerritos Farmers Market.

Rikondja is the owner and baker of Kifani Creations— her cookie business that proves not all cookies are created equal. The baked goods are made with natural, classic ingredients with no preservatives or artificial ingredients. Rikondja uses her original recipes that she’s developed over the 25 years she's been baking.

She wants people to be able to taste all the flavorful ingredients in each cookie. And to ensure that the cookies come out soft and moist, Rikondja makes the extra effort to mix the batter by hand the old-fashioned way (She notes that mixing tools may overly mix the ingredients and make the cookies hard and crunchy).

Every week at the Kifani Creations stand, you can find the following flavor varieties: Chocolate Chip, Lemon Butter, Cinnamon Sugar, Butter Toffee, Oatmeal Symphony and Oatmeal Raisin with Pecans. The classic Chocolate Chip is always a bestseller. The Oatmeal Raisin with Pecans is also popular because it’s made with a touch of honey instead of sugar. The Lemon Butter cookie resembles the flavors of a homemade lemon pound cake. She’ll also alternate between flavors such as Pecan Praline and Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookie with Almonds, depending on the demands of the customers.

Kifani Creations was born when Rikondja started selling some of her cookies to her coworkers at her full-time job. The high demand for her cookies weekly led her to start selling at farmers markets. Many new flavors were developed from taking suggestions from friends, coworkers and loyal customers.

She gave her business its name because "Kifani" means “unique” in Swahili, and "Kifani Creations" embodied her business of one-of-a-kind homemade cookies.

“We’re just a small business,” said Rikondja. “But we’re just trying to take the talent that God gave me to make people happy, because it’s my joy to do this!"

She currently only sells at the Cerritos Farmers Market, so I would highly suggest that you stop by to take advantage of these delicious treats. Rikondja has samples of all her flavors so you can decide there which ones you want to take home.  

Stop by early, because by the time I got there (roughly 11:30 a.m.) there was only one pack of cookies left! The Cerritos Farmers Market is open from 8 a.m. to noon every Saturday, so swing by early for the best selection.