Apr 8, 2024 By Katherine Mansfield 3 min read

One doesn’t need special sunglasses to look directly at Bethel Bakery’s latest culinary confection.

The bakery, with locations in Bethel Park and along Route 19 in North Strabane, is “totality” leaning into the hype surrounding today’s total solar eclipse, with limited edition solar eclipse cookies.

“It was kind of last minute,” said Natalie Lacek, marketing coordinator at Bethel Bakery. “We noticed the solar eclipse was getting a lot of traction on news outlets. We started experimenting with some designs a couple weeks ago.”

When held to the sky, the winning cookie design looks uncannily like a real solar eclipse, only it’s soft and sweet and 100% edible. Bethel Bakery decorates its iced shortbread cookies with an edible image, airbrushes the edges black, to resemble outer space, Lacek said, and tops the entire cookie in edible glitter for a far-out look.

Bethel Bakery encouraged people to tag the bakery in their solar eclipse photos on social media for a chance to be featured, as a way to carry on the fun ahead of the solar eclipse this afternoon.

The cookies were announced the last weekend of March, and folks were encouraged to preorder the galactic goodie. Since that announcement, the cookies have totally eclipsed the hearts of locals with sweet tooths.

“We wanted just to do something fun for the eclipse. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Lacek said. “Our expectations have been blown away.”

On Saturday, Bethel Bakery shared to Instagram a behind-the-scenes video of the solar eclipse cookies being made. Within three hours, the video had garnered more than 2,300 views. And both the Bethel Park and the North Strabane Township locations were jam-packed with guests excited to take solar eclipse cookies to area watch parties, office watch parties, or home for eclipse viewing in their backyards.

Bakers and decorators spent the weekend working at the speed of light to bake and hand-decorate the cookies, to keep the treat in stock. The bakery will also offer a limited number of special solar eclipse cakes in stores Monday.

Courtesy Natalie Lacek

Along with its outta-this-world cookies, Bethel Bakery is offering a limited number of solar eclipse cakes in stores today, while supplies last.

Those waiting til the last minute to grab solar eclipse desserts for an area watch party, a work watch party or a home viewing shouldn’t wish upon a falling star for cookies to be available when they arrive at the bakery this morning; they should get there early, Lacek said.

“Everything is first come, first serve. We didn’t expect to have such a high influx of people. Our team is just trying to keep up. They’re just flying off the shelves,” she said.

The community’s response to Bethel Bakery’s cookies eclipsed all expectations, and the bakery has enjoyed interacting with customers ahead of today’s solar eclipse. Bethel Bakery encouraged followers on social media to shoot for the moon by tagging the bakery in their solar eclipse cookie photos, for a chance to be featured.

“The response has been amazing. With this being a total solar eclipse, we thought it would be exciting to do something for this occasion,” Lacek said. “It’s been really fun.”