Joanna Gaines Is Launching Frozen Baked Goods

Joanna Gaines’ signature recipes are about to be available as frozen baked goods.

The Fixer Upper star’s Magnolia Table is launching a new line of six products at Target starting Sunday, Oct. 5: Chocolate Chip Cookies, Classic Sugar Cookies, Silo Cookies, Classic Cinnamon Rolls, After School Banana Bread and Jo’s Buttermilk Biscuits. 

PEOPLE visited Magnolia’s headquarters in Waco, Texas, to get an early taste of the treats, which had all the rich, homemade flavor Gaines’ culinary creations are known for. The HGTV alum’s new series Magnolia Table: At the Farm premiered on Food Network last month, along with Magnolia Network, her and husband Chip Gaines’ network that debuted in 2021.

Speaking at a press preview on Wednesday, Oct. 1, Joanna said she’s particularly proud of the biscuits, which are part of their family story.

“Chip just wanted a really good biscuit with gravy,” she recalled of when their children were younger. “He grew up with the canned biscuits. But I was like, ‘I want to make a homemade biscuit.’”

“I feel like it took years to develop a recipe that everyone agreed on,” she added. “And finally when we found it, it was like, everyone was happy. Did this every Saturday. It’s my boys’ favorite meal.” 

However, she eventually got “bored” with that recipe and began working on another that’s now a staple at the family’s table.

“It’s more layered,” she says of the newer recipe, which served as the inspiration for the frozen version. 

Joanna says perfecting her biscuits has been a “labor of love,” as the couple’s five kids, Drake, 20, Ella, 18, Duke, 17, Emmie, 15, and Crew, 7, have grown up.

In fact, Drake — now a junior in college — called her on a recent Thursday with a special request.

“He was like, ‘Mom, I’m bringing all my roommates in. Can you make biscuits and gravy for us?’” she says.

The following Sunday morning, she brought out the snack — but didn’t tell him they were from the new frozen line.

“I hid the box,” she says. “He gave it a 10, which to me was the biggest win because he’s like … the biscuit connoisseur. So Drake gives them a 10. His friends ate all of them. I ended up making four boxes. All of them were gone.”

The chocolate chip cookies, which offer notes of warm vanilla and sea salt, also hold a special place in Joanna’s heart for their association with her dad.

“My mom being Korean, she doesn’t love sweets and she never learned to cook sweets,” she says. “So growing up, if we had a sweet tooth, it was, like, my dad would take us to the gas station and we’d get candy bars.”

She remembers one day where he threw a bag of chocolate chips on the counter. “He’s like, ‘Let’s figure out how to do this.’ I think I was 10 or 11,” she recalls.

Joanna and her father then baked their first batch of cookies together.

“I’ll never forget that memory because to me, that then started something in my mind with my dad.” she says. “I want to surprise and delight my dad. And even to this day, if I make anything at home that’s sweet, I’ll save half of it for my dad, drop it off. Because that’s like his love language is food, especially sugar.”

She adds, “And so to me, when I think of chocolate chip cookies, I think about that first time baking with my dad and how that really ignited something in me that really, when we get to cook and bake for others, it is loving people and it’s sharing that with them.”

Because her dad loves black coffee and whipped cream, she began serving the cookies with both for dipping.

“I’m a daddy’s girl,” she says. “He had three daughters and I feel like we’re all just like, ‘Whatever, Dad.’ He’s our hero. So this is an ode to my dad and this is what he loves.”

When her father had a recent surgery and couldn’t have sweets, he was eager for her to bake for him again.

“While he was in the hospital, every time I went to visit him he was like, ‘I can’t wait for you to make…’ It’s like, ‘Dad, just make me a list. And when you can eat real food again, I will,’” she says.

He filled a yellow note pad with requests for his favorites, such as tenderloin and Syrian doughnuts — but chocolate chip cookies were first on the list.

“I’m like, ‘Poor dad is hungry,’” she says. “I’m going to frame that, because to me that’s everything I cook for my dad. So to me that’s a gift that I get to now put in the kitchen, dad’s favorite food.”

As a “rule follower,” Joanna planned to wait another week for her dad’s full recovery before cooking for him. But she says he “cheated” when her mom got a box of her new frozen cookies to support her new venture.

“Last night at midnight, my dad sends me a picture,” she says. “He’s eating a chocolate chip cookie. Of course this morning he’s cramping and I’m like, ‘Dad…’ Anyways, he was so happy about that. He’s like, ‘Now I don’t have to wait for you to cook for me.’”

“It was cute,” she adds. “But my dad was very happy at midnight when he was eating one of these cookies. He said it was wonderful.”

The banana bread, infused with brown sugar, and gooey cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing are among the recipes from her three Magnolia Table cookbooks that prompt the most social media tags from fans.

She also wanted to feature the top three best-selling cookies at her Waco bakery, Silos Baking Co, which include the nostalgic, buttery sugar cookies and the kid-friendly silo cookies, with peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, warm oats and crunchy walnuts among the ingredients.

“To me, a sugar cookie is the most classic,” she says. “You can do so many things with a sugar cookie as far as keeping it as simple as you want, but also creating a bigger moment with it.”

The back of the box for the sugar cookies includes a recipe for buttercream filling, which she recommends using to make cookie sandwiches that can be decorated with colorful sprinkles.

“If you’re throwing a party or if you’re wanting to give a gift to teachers, this is just a way to say thank you, but in a simple way,” she says. “But it also feels thoughtful and cute because of the sprinkles.”

The new products, which go straight from the box to the oven and take 15-25 minutes to heat up, are meant to make baking more convenient without sacrificing quality ingredients and made-from-scratch taste.

“In reality, we’re all busy,” Joanna says. “For me with five kiddos and all of them in sports, it’s like a juggle. I was looking at my schedule today and I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve got a volleyball game two hours away. I’ve got a football.’”

She explains that the biscuits can be an easy “cheat” to supplement home-cooked dishes such as chicken and rice or mac and cheese, so that busy parents aren’t making every element of the meal from scratch.

As for the three cookie varieties, she thinks other families will relate to her kids asking “Okay, what’s for dessert?” at the end of every dinner.

“Even for me, as much as I love to just cook and bake from scratch, this is helpful in this season of life,” Joanna says. “‘Oh, I have some cheats,’ I can just throw in this, add some ice cream to the sugar cookies, call it a dessert.” And that was one less thing I had to plan around.” 

“So I will be baking this as much as anybody else,” she adds. “Finding more time in my schedule would be nice, so this is going to be helpful.”