The best cookies we ate this month were loaded with crickets. Hey, don’t go! We’re serious.
What you see here are delicious butterscotch cookies made with cricket flour and coconut flakes. At center stage are chocolate-covered Cricket Clusters threaded with pumpkin seeds, red pepper, and smoked salt. The sweet treats are the creation of Tammy Mann and Susan Otten, co-founders of Harmony Cricket Farm in Chanhassen.
Mann came up with the idea for the company after a friend suggested cricket-powered smoothies while training for a triathlon. She quickly found that the cricket protein powder made her feel less bloated and more energized than whey.
Photo: Harmony Cricket Farm
After reading more about entomophagy, the millennia-old practice of eating insects, Mann came to believe that crickets were the last frontier in superfoods. In addition to being packed with protein, they’re a sustainable source of calcium, iron, potassium (more than bananas even!), Omega-3s, and fiber. They’re also much kinder to the environment than livestock, since they reproduce quickly and require less land and feed. Oh, and they don’t blast the atmosphere with methane — yay 🌍! — so you can save your carbon offset credits for true post-pandemic adventuring.
Harmony’s cricket-based products hit all the right health food notes: They’re gluten-, nut-, and GMO-free; the company sources many of its non-cricket ingredients from Minnesota producers, including Graise Farm in Faribault and Jirik Family Farms in Farmington; and its commercial kitchen is located at The Good Acre, a beloved community food hub in Falcon Heights.
Photo: Harmony Cricket Farm
Beyond the butterscotch cookies (which we seriously can’t stop munching), Mann and Otten make chirp snack packs featuring three different flavors of roasted crickets: Sweet Nibbles, Flamin’ Hot, and 100% Natural. (Nice birthday suit, Jiminy!)
As consumers become less bugged out by the thought of eating bugs, Harmony Cricket finds itself in good company locally. 3 Cricketeers in St. Louis Park was Minnesota’s first edible cricket farm. It too makes antennae-stuffed snacks, including granola bars with cricket powder and roasted crickets dusted in fun seasonings like curry and chili-lime.
Feeling cricket-curious? Shop online at Harmony Cricket Farm and 3 Cricketeers, or swing by Vivir, Jami Olson’s new Mexican café, bakery, and market, to purchase many of the winged things you see here. 🦗
