Nelly Valverde, a retired teacher has certainly found her next calling - that calling which surprised her as much as anyone who knows her well is baking cookies.  Not just any cookie though... alfajores! Alfajores (pronounced AL-FA-HO-RES), are simply two round sweet and buttery biscuits joined together with delicious 'dulce de leche' (a caramel-like spread) and covered with powdered sugar. They are a favorite treat in South America and were really hard to find here in the United States - until now!

Nelly baked her first batch of alfajores as a reward for her students. "I worked in a lot of different schools", Nelly says. "This one group of students was so disciplined and willing to learn; I was so impressed with these kids". So she made them a batch of cookies as a gift, using a Peruvian recipe, from the land of her birth. The kids went wild and Nelly knew she was onto something – hence the birth of her company Nelly’s Alfajores.

With only word-of-mouth advertising, Nelly was soon making 40 to 50 dozen per day, and her cookies had traveled to New York City, to Connecticut, to Florida, to California, and beyond.

In early 2007, Nelly decided it was time to take that next step in sharing her gourmet cookies with a broader audience. In turn www.NellysAlfajores.com was born!

So why does Nelly continue to bake these cookies? She simply says, "I love the reaction I get when someone tastes them"!