Marisa Angebranndt concluded her work night on Nov. 22 at 3:30 a.m., loading her car with frosting and baked cookies comprising her nearly completed to-do list: 326 chocolate whoopie pies, 238 red velvet, and 204 vanilla.

What used to be a casual, once-a-year holiday baking tradition is now an online bakery that keeps Angebranndt working around the clock.

Just a year and a half ago, she spent her weekdays managing an office for the brokerage firm Read Capital Management and her weekends catching the latest movies and frequenting the newest restaurants. But in the wake of the recession and subsequent lay-off, Angebranndt’s weekdays and weekends are now spent in her personal kitchen, in her rented kitchen in Long Island City, at the post office, and in a home office where Angebraandt runs her online bakery, WannaHavaCookie.com.

Angebranndt always loved baking for friends and family, but never saw herself as an entrepreneur. She was content getting handed a daily to-do list and keeping the offices of executives running smoothly. But after her job ended in March 2008, she used her severance package as an opportunity. "Without the recession, I never would have done this," she said.

For years Marisa and her husband Mark, a project manager for Bank of America, had a popular tradition of giving packages of cookies to friends and colleagues for the holidays. "After a year or two people started coming out of the woodwork in November saying, 'Oh, are you doing Christmas cookies this year?'" Mark recalled. "I hadn't talked to some of these people in like six months."

When Marisa found out in November 2007 that her office would be shutting down in the coming months, she decided to see if the usual compliments on her baking would translate into sales. Before distributing the baked goods that year, Marisa sent out an email calling upon her friends and cookie fans to be part of a “holiday experiment” that would serve “as a learning process and trial run for a larger operation."

Friends were asked to be Marisa’s promoters by passing along enclosed order forms to their friends and loved ones who might be interested in purchasing the holiday treats. The experiment brought in about $800 in orders – enough to convince them to pursue the business.

The Angebranndts got to work selecting packaging, refining recipes, and promoting the brand. By July of 2008 Marisa was selling her cookies at the Brooklyn Flea Market. They hired an attorney to help with all the laws governing small food businesses, and an accountant to help with the finances. They invested in a slick website and started renting commercial kitchen space once a week.

When Marisa's job ended, their income fell by almost half at the same time they committed to the new business. In order to adapt they have had to make sacrifices: they don't try new restaurants or visit family as often as they used to. They moved from their Financial District apartment overlooking the Hudson to a cheaper two-bedroom in Harlem, where one room became WannaHavaCookie headquarters. Even during the holiday rush, they stay mindful of the lean months ahead when holiday sales fade into New Year's diets.

This holiday season reached a level unimaginable during the test run two years ago, after a full-page glossy spread featuring a pile of WannaHavaCookie’s chocolate and red velvet whoopie pies led the “Gifts under $50” section of “Real Simple” magazine’s December issue. Orders started pouring in from around the country as the magazine reached its 8 million readers. The to-do list kept growing.

In April of 2008, WannaHavaCookie’s first official month of business, sales were $350. This December, the Angebranndts are projecting $40,000 in sales. On the home page of their site is a message reading, “Our production schedule has filled for the 2009 holiday season.”

"We vacillate between extreme panic," said Mark, "and thinking, 'We can do this.'"

“I have to keep reminding myself that this is something I wanted to do,” Marisa says, “but at the same time I still enjoy it when I’m actually in the trenches, elbow deep in dough, trying to figure out how to get everything done.”

The sudden boom means a daunting amount of work, but it's the kind they always hoped for. "The biggest change in the past month for us has been the realization that this is a viable business," Marisa said.

Someday Marisa hopes to have 10 to 15 employees, work from her very own commercial kitchen, have enough sales to permit her husband join the company full-time, and expand from a website to a physical shop. But those goals are still a long way off, just dreams to savor during long nights of mixing, scooping, counting, and packaging. "Right now we're still struggling to make ends meet and make this business profitable," Marisa said.

As the bakery has grown, Marisa has become more comfortable with the responsibility of managing her own business. It has meant significantly longer hours – it is not uncommon for Marisa to go 48 hours without sleep – and sore feet and wrists from the constant standing and scooping. As a business manager, she’s also learned to be mindful of the details. Marisa bakes two or three rounds of cookies on the same parchment paper, knowing that the pennies add up.

Despite the grueling amount of work, Marisa has realized the value of having the freedom to set her own schedule. “I didn’t realize how completely driven my whole life was by someone else’s schedule,” Marisa said, “until I got my own schedule.”