Business & Tech

The World According to Bonnie

She has been an opera singer, a film star and now she makes cookies that melt in your mouth.

Bonnie Cosaro has had a life worthy of its own novel.

She has been an opera singer, starred opposite of Paul Newman on the big screen and has rubbed elbows with major Hollywood players. But today Cosaro lives a sweeter if not calmer life in Villanova, where she makes about a thousand cookies every day.

Bonnie's Best Cookies are thin, crispy and includes many of the classics, including snickerdoodles, lemon sablé and flourless macaroons. They are sold at Gladwyne Pharmacy, the Bryn Mawr Hospital's gift shop and Beaumont at Bryn Mawr.

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You can also order her cookies on her website or on MainLineDelivery.com. Half of a dozen will cost you $5.10; a dozen $9.25. One of her biggest cookie clients is Merion Golf Club. The upcoming U.S. open there is "very exciting," she said, and is occasion for Bonnie to churn out thousands of her cookies for the event.

Cosaro is a Chestnut Hill native who started her career as an opera singer with the New York City Opera. She played Paul Newman's opera-singing girlfriend in the 1976 movie Buffalo Bill and the Indians. She said it was an "interesting experience" filming the movie in the gorgeous terrain of Banff and Lake Louise in Canada. She also apeared on Broadway.

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Cosaro said she sought a calmer life for her and her young son on Fishers Island, New York, but excitement seems to follow her wherever she goes. Her gift and flower shop on the island was tapped by wealthy families on the island, many of whom were based in the Philadelphia area. All of a sudden she was doing all of the landscaping for the film The World According to Garp starring Robin Williams, which was filmed on the island. (She also happened to have a landscape architecture license.)

She worked on "humongous" island weddings and "the next thing I know I had a landscaping company," Cosaro told Bryn Mawr Patch. An encounter with actress Ali McGraw led her to landscape the island estate of the man who was at the time the head of Sony.

After Fishers Island she moved back to the Philadelphia area. From 2004 to 2006 she had Bonnie's comfort food cafe in Wayne, but the loss of that business hit her hard. She said she still has many people who ask her to cook her savory comfort food for them.

Life was peaceful for Cosaro until 2010, which she said was a rough year personally for her that included a cancer scare and a ponzi scheme bust involving the property owner she rented from. Even now the future of her home is uncertain as a developer has just purchased the estate.

But "I'm a strong person. I work really hard," she said.


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