Playing around in a lab can be dangerous. You have to be very careful about what you’re mixing together. A dash of this and a pinch of that could result in – cookies? Well an idea to market them anyway.

Director of the Bioprocess Scale-Up Facility Barney “Ben” Woodard recently decided to diverge from his day-to-day job of baking batches of bacteria to baking batches of cookies. Not just your regular chocolate chip recipe, but vanilla shortbread cookies with celebrity faces plastered into them.

LikeUms, started by Woodard and his friend who works in mutual funds, Chuck DiRocco, look like a box of Animal Crackers at first glance. However, the characters aren’t llamas and elephants, but rather buttery desserts in the shape of the faces of Angelina Jolie, Bruce Willis, the Olson Twins, Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez and Johnny Depp.

“Chuck first came up with the idea when he went to the movie theater concession stand to get a cookie, but there weren’t any cookies, the product started there – I became his partner,” Woodard says.

Woodard, a graduate of the university, manages the technicians and equipment at the BSF, located near the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building.

The BSF is responsible for taking small Maryland companies with a lab-produced product – such as a cure for a disease – to a mass production level.

The cookie’s faces are determined by surveys about who people thought the most popular stars were and who has the most staying power in Hollywood, according to Woodard.

“We try to pick a celebrity everyone can relate to – children, adults, old people … try to find something that fits,” Woodard says. “We got pretty fortunate with Angelina, with her getting pregnant right when the cookies first came out.”

At first it was hard for the duo to get their product off the ground because of problems with bakeries, cost and time management.

“The first edition was more of a learning experience, even though we sold about 5,000 boxes of cookies, we weren’t stream-lined and didn’t realize how much it would cost to get started or how time-consuming it would be. It’s not like we’re Oprah,” Woodard says.

Don’t get the wrong idea. This is not just some side garage project living next to old fermenters. Just a week ago, LikeUms were featured on the Food Network’s Unwrapped, in an episode featuring cookies and cakes.

The second edition came out two weeks ago with a new bakery based near Los Angeles. DiRocco and Woodard already have the edible stars in some Regal Cinemas theaters across the country as well as in some boutique-like shops. They are in negotiations to get the cookies into Hollywood and Blockbuster video stores.

The cookies are available online at www.likeums.com for $7.95 for a four-pack.

Lindsay Mize, a senior public relations major, works in the Potomac Building next to the BSF. She was surprised at how good the cookies were.

“It says vanilla on the box but I think they have more of a buttery taste. They remind me of those Girl Scout cookies Trefoils. I was surprised that a scientist would be into making and marketing cookies,” Mize says.

Hoping to munch on some buttery stars while watching them on the big screen? No such luck here. The cookies are not in Regal Cinemas theaters in Maryland or Virginia.

“The movie theaters aren’t our real niche, they end up marking them up a lot because they don’t want to take away from their popcorn profit. We really want to get them into the video stores,” Woodard says.

Contact reporter Megan Hartley at diverisons@dbk.umd.edu.