What do you get when you mix salt, sugar, flour, sunflower oil and roasted green peas? “The happeaest cookie on Earth,” says Larissa Russell ’13, cofounder of Green Pea Cookie. The San Francisco-based “entrepeaneur” discusses the joys and challenges of launching a social enterprise—and shares a healthy dose of pea puns along the way.

How would you describe the taste of a Green Pea Cookie?
First of all, I would say it is a divine little “pealight.” And second of all, I’d say it’s crunchy, it’s creamy, it kind of melts in your mouth, but it’s also sweet and salty at the same time. The cookies are vegan, so they contain no butter and no eggs and the amount of sugar is not terrible. They’re 25-percent peas, actually. The peas are roasted first, so they’re soft with a nutty flavor. Peater is our original Green Pea Cookie, and we also have Penelopea the Cranberry Green Pea Cookie for the holiday season and Dimpea the Chocolate Dipped Green Pea Cookie, which is coming soon.

How did Green Pea Cookie start?
A few months after I graduated from Dartmouth I moved to San Francisco and started working for a small startup. One time my friend and coworker Sean was visited by his parents from Singapore and they brought him some green pea cookies. We all tried them, and I thought they were the best. Then Sean had this idea to sell the cookies on an e-commerce platform. He partnered with Fiona, our other cofounder, who started working to perfect the recipe in Singapore. I guess they realized that they really needed someone here full time who could help build it out as a U.S. brand. And so I joined.

Are green pea cookies widely available in Singapore?
Before we set up our Singaporean operation, they were not that common. You might have found them around Chinese New Year. Green pea cookies are usually a family recipe, comparable to some Christmas cookies.

Where do you source the ingredients?
Besides the peas, we get all the ingredients from a distributor in Petaluma, California. One of our main goals for the company as we expand is to have local sourcing and local production and to make sure that everything is fairly sourced with as little waste as possible. The peas are a struggle for us right now because we’re too small to be able to roast our own and we can only buy them pre-roasted from overseas. We like the peas because they’re non-GMO but they’re not ideal for us yet, because we can’t get them with natural food dye.

In early 2015 you ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign and raised nearly $38,000—how did you use the funds?
We used Kickstarter more as a way to get the word out about Green Pea Cookie than to raise money—we spent most of the funds on fulfilling the orders. Kickstarter is great for testing your product with people who are a little bit more understanding than typical customers, because they know that you’re just starting out. With a few exceptions, the Kickstarter community was super-supportive, especially during the fulfillment phase.

Did you have any significant baking experience prior to coming on board at Green Pea Cookie?
I used to bake for fun when I was little, but I was not some big baker. Fiona developed the first recipe, then Sean and I baked them in San Francisco and took samples out to Dolores Park on the weekends. People would look at us like we were a little odd and say, “I don’t know…does the cookie have something in it?” They’d take it and smell it and then eventually they’d realize that we just wanted to share our cookies. We collected people’s feedback on the texture and the taste using an app. Then we’d send the feedback to Fiona, who would concoct the next version of the recipe.

Where were you baking the cookies at that point?
It was just out of my apartment. We would make about 20 cookies at a time. Our cookie is not very hard to make—you just mix the ingredients together.

How do you keep from eating too many cookies?
I try not to have them unless I have to taste one from the batch to make sure it’s good. It has happened to me before where I’ll have a bag of “peajects”—rejected pea cookies—in our apartment and I’ll eat one. And then, later, I’ll have eaten way more than a standard serving size. I try to not let that happen too often.

Has it been difficult to convince consumers that a pea can make for a great dessert?
In a way, that’s a challenge, because you have to get people to stop looking at something judgmentally without trying it. On the other hand, our target demographic is people who are willing to try new things.

What is your role at the company now?
My official title is “Cofounder and Cookie Miss.” The three of us share a lot of the responsibility at this point, but we are also specializing and collaborating between our U.S. and Singapore branches. I’m focusing mainly on marketing, sales and content in the United States. We’re trying to make the content a huge part of Green Pea Cookie, in part by developing a whole world around Peater the Original Green Pea Cookie, because we want to create a company that inspires “happeaness.” I’m also still baking in the kitchen with Fiona and the rest of the baking team and doing whatever else is needed. All three of us bake, as do all new employees. It’s the hardest part.

Are you still doing all the baking in your apartment?
We have a commercial kitchen space in San Mateo, California, and we use huge machines to make 20,000 cookies at a time. The machinery is so heavy. I thought I was pretty strong and in shape. Wrong!

You actually recommend pairing the cookies with wine?
We list on our label that Peater is most “peasurable” with wine, tea and ice cream. I’d say it goes great with a Riesling. Penelopea is good with mulled wine, hot chocolate and egg nog—she’s getting in the “Peasmas” spirit.

What are your long-term goals for Green Pea Cookie?
Ultimately, we want to create something that inspires happiness and a feeling of connection and sameness among people while celebrating differences. It’s not just about the cookie tasting good, even though that’s a huge part of it, and it’s not just about bopping along being “happea for the sake of being happea.” We want to create something genuine and lasting: sustainable operations, transparency in our marketing. And on the brand and content side: an emphasis on positivity, mindfulness and an inclusive outlook on the world.

Do you have a favorite pea pun?
“Go conpeadently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you have peamagined.”

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.