Photo Courtesy: Katie Higgins

By Sloane Samberson
staff writer

From email address to blog URL to cookbook title, Chocolate-Covered Katie has evolved to be one of the most well known sources of healthy dessert recipes.

Created by Katie Higgins back in 2007 around the time she graduated from Coppell High School, Chocolate-Covered Katie did not originally start as a healthy dessert blog.

“It started as a way to keep up with friends when we went off to different colleges,” Higgins said. “It was not originally intended to be a food blog at all, Chocolate-Covered Katie was actually my email account name when I was in middle school.”

Higgins was born in England, but has lived as far as Japan, as close as Coppell, and now currently resides in Washington D.C.

“I grew up in a household that stressed the importance of vegetables and healthy eating, but I also can’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t eating dessert at least once a day,” Higgins said.

Chocolate has always been Higgins’ favorite food.

“As a child, while other kids ate pizza and drank cokes, Katie ate Nutella sandwiches, which she called chocolate sandwiches, and a water bottle,” mother and CHS special education teacher Eileen Higgins said.

Chocolate-Covered Katie was developed around the same time the Internet was really taking off.

“[Katie’s] love of food, her creativity and her exposure to digital graphics with [Cindy] Wolfe, her senior year at CHS, all came together and Chocolate-Covered Katie was born,” Mrs. Higgins said.

Once Katie graduated from CHS, she was thrown into the world of junk food, fast food and the freshman-15, college. Katie was not used to this.

“[Katie] quickly figured out she better learn to cook, and she began to experiment with creating recipes of her own,” Mrs. Higgins said.

This is when Chocolate-Covered Katie transformed into a healthy dessert blog and the creating process began.

“I am constantly thinking of new recipes,” Katie said. “I brainstorm as I’m eating, while exercising, at the grocery store, or even in bed at night. There are little scraps of paper all over my apartment on which I’ve jotted down ideas for new recipes.”

Having the opportunity to live all over the world, Katie was exposed to many different foods.

“Katie’s experiments with cooking often incorporate flavors and ideas from the places she had lived or visited,” Mrs. Higgins said. “She has always been an adventurous eater and that carried on to her creativity with food.”

Creating the perfect recipe is done tediously through trial and error.

“Some recipes are perfected on the first try, but most take two or three tries, and some take even more than that,” Katie said.

In 2012, a publishing house approached Katie. Now three years later and “Chocolate-Covered Katie: Over 80 Delicious Recipes That Are Secretly Good for You”, finally arrived in stores.

“I still can’t believe it,” Mrs. Higgins said. “Several years ago Katie said she hoped a publisher would notice her blog and offer her a cookbook deal. Now that cookbook sits on my desk and in our school library, I feel like it is all a dream sometimes.”

Wolfe, who has kept in touch with Katie, enjoys cooking recipes from the cookbook Katie gave her as a gift.

“I have made the flour-less chocolate chip cookies on page 30 and the On The Go Breakfast Oatmeal Trail Mix cupcakes,” Wolfe said. “Both my husband and I think they are great and very easy to make and eat.”

Katie has received great amounts of praise from her hometown friends, students and faculty at CHS, through Amazon reviews and comments on Facebook.

“The best part has actually not been the crazy amount of press and publicity with fans I’ve never met, it’s been the reactions from people in my real life,” Katie said. “Friends who threw me a surprise launch party or who bought copies of the book for their own family members.”

Katie’s success online and offline did not happen overnight. Her dedication and creativeness attracts foodies nationwide.

“I’m passionate about my job, and I think people can feel that,” Katie said. “Excitement is contagious.”

If anything, Katie would want her readers to take away this:

“Dessert does not have to be something you save for a once-a-week treat,” Katie said. “And healthy desserts can taste just as good as their traditional counterparts, they just need to be prepared correctly.”