Maya and Murrah are cookie sisters baking the San Francisco Bay Area a happy place. Both share a passion for creative cookie art, connecting with others, and helping fellow bakers grow their sugar skill sets. Known for dreaming up unique and creative cookies with a focus on design, realism, texture, painting, and sculpting, the pair believes that anything has the potential to be a beautiful cookie.

When not at CookieCon, you can find the sisters teaching at the iconic San Francisco Ferry Building, designing online courses and teaching virtual workshops with How To Cake It, traveling for private celebrity cookie classes, hosting cookie community events, making local TV appearances, collaborating with companies like Cirque du Soleil and major motion picture studios, and authoring features in magazines like Cake Masters and Bust. Teaching together is a dream come true and they can’t wait to meet you in Ohio!

Brittany Geil is the cookie artist of 6 B’s Creations. She is a wife to her amazing husband Brian and mom to her 4 awesome kids. Their whole family has names that start with the letter B which is where her business name 6 B’s Creations came from. Brittany got her start in cookies after attending a cookie class by the talented Kristin Grunder of Grunderfully Delicious. She immediately fell in love with the idea of creating art through the form of cookies.

Friends and family started ordering and her business was born. After decorating for a year, her clients and friends started asking if she would teach cookie classes. Having recently taken a leave of absence from her full time special education teaching job, she loved transferring her knowledge of teaching children to teaching people of all ages through clear, straight forward, step-by-step instruction. This time around, she was teaching with icing instead of crayons. Teaching cookie classes quickly became a passion of hers as she welcomed local customers into her home to share her love of decorating. Brittany soon had people from outside her community asking if she would offer classes online. She started recording herself decorating cookies and putting together different class sets.

Today she has a collection of over 70 online classes and an amazing community of talented cookiers through her Insiders program. She hopes to continue sharing her love of cookies and would love to one day have her own storefront.

Pinar Gwyn of Pinar’s Patisserie began her sugar art journey when she was planning her son’s birthday party in 2010 and stumbled upon Pinterest, which just launched the same year. All the beautiful creations she saw sparked her already existing interest for anything fine art, DIY and crafts. It was then when she discovered the world of sugar cookie decorating - but with fondant.

It wasn’t till Winter of 2019 when she finally had the courage to experiment with royal icing which she was very intimated by, after years of decorating cakes and cookies with home made fondant only. It was also the same time when she auditioned for Food Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge where she competed and made it to the final round, only after five months of decorating with royal icing. The rest is history. Since then Pinar’s work has been featured in various magazines, local TV channels and online cookie decorating platforms. Pinar’s work placed twice 3rd place at CookieCon in mystery shape decorating (swan in Louisville 2020 and orange branch in Orlando 2021) and it is one of her favorite events at the convention!

She is currently teaching one-on-one and group classes in person and online. Her biggest motto in cookie decorating is to “Trust the process!” Pinar is Turkish and was born and raised in Germany. Pinar lives in Northern Virginia with her four amazing children, husband and their French bulldog Django. Pinar has a big appreciation and passion for all kind of art - edible and non edible!

Hello everyone! Prior to delving into the world of decorated sugar cookies, I was a registered nurse and worked in labor and delivery for 21 years before retiring after having my youngest child, Penelope in 2017. I took a beginner cookie decorating class just for fun in December 2018 and quickly became obsessed with making decorated sugar cookies. I would give away my practice cookies to friends, neighbors, and my husband’s coworkers. Before I knew it, I began receiving orders for custom made cookies from those who had tasted my practice cookies. I never intended on operating a cookie decorating business, but after several order requests and a little pep talk from my husband, I decided to give it a go and haven’t looked back! I named my cookie business after my daughter, Penelope, since she was the reason I had retired from nursing, and had the time on my hands to devote to cookies. Aside from taking custom orders, I teach in person cookie decorating classes in my home based cookie classroom, and have also produced online classes as well. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Leslie Marchio is the creative brains behind Four Peas and a Dog and has been decorating cookies professionally since 2012. Her meticulously clean designs and abstract concepts are helping her to carve out a niche in the upper echelon of cookie artists across the country.

When she began growing her family, Leslie took on cookie art as a hobby amid juggling four children, but the demand for her work quickly turned from hobby to professional. With a Masters in Architecture, and a prior career as a designer in a high-end residential firm, Leslie has translated her design perspective and 3-D modeling skills to a new medium. In the last few years, Leslie has been recruited for online tutorials, featured on Food Network and placed in various National and International Cookie Competitions. She loves the creative freedom, and the ability to share her love of cookie art with the public.

Through in-person and online classes, Leslie’s steady hand and practiced techniques have inspired everyone she’s taught, from coast to coast, amateur to professional, child to senior citizen, and now she’s here to inspire YOU!

Timbo has been decorating cakes and cookies in Columbus Ohio and worldwide for almost 12 years. He has won a number of awards in cake competitions, TV shows and live challenges. Timbo is known for his bold use of color and hyper realistic sculpting style, which he has been traveling the world to teach as a sugar art instructor for the past 6 years.

Timbo has been featured on the Food Network and Cooking Channel multiple times, and is a 4x Food Network Winner. You may have seen him on Food Network's Duff Til Dawn, Outrageous Wedding Cakes, Ridiculous Cakes, Crazy Cakes, Skin Wars: Fresh Paint, and most notably Macy's Thanksgiving Cake Spectacular where he won $25K in season 1, and went on to become a judge in season 2. You can currently find Timbo on Discovery+ judging on HBO Max's BAKETOPIA.

Samantha Baughman is the creative mind behind Sammie B's Sweets. In 2012 she accidentally stumbled into the world of cookie decorating. She was a stay at home mom and cake decorator, and it was by chance that she ended up in a cookie decorating forum run by Mike and Karen. There she quickly fell in love with the cookie community. Her first batch of cookies was an absolute disaster, but with the encouragement of the cookiers in the forum, her second batch was much better and she was hooked! She spent the next year teaching herself everything she could about decorating, through trial and error, and by 2014 had started her business selling cookies and teaching decorating classes in her local community.

Since then, Samantha has spent years pushing the limits of her abilities with cookies and royal icing. She started exploring the vertical world of cookies through 3D designs and cookie sculptures, earning her several sugar show awards. Her work has been featured on the Food Network, and she also competed on the Christmas Cookie Challenge. Cookies are one of her life's passions, especially teaching classes. She teaches everything from beginner basics to complex 3D structures. Along with her business, Samantha also runs Operation Cookie Takeover, a community project that ships cookies to soldiers deployed all over the world. With the help of the cookie community, over 225,000 cookies have been shipped to date!

When not making cookies or teaching classes, you'll find Samantha spending time with her husband and four kids, chauffeuring them to all of their sports, coaching basketball, rock climbing, tending to her bees and her garden, hiking, or trying new hobbies and crafts. As a self described lifelong student, she is passionate about learning from all types of artists.

Brian Muffoletto and Nick Napierala are teachers by day and bakers by night. They co-own their business, The Bakers Men Buffalo, located in Lancaster, NY. This baking duo specializes in custom decorated sugar cookies, bakery style gourmet cookies and instructing cookie classes. Their bakery name was inspired by the famous nursery rhyme of “Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake, Bakers man”, but when there's two men in the kitchen, it's the Bakers Men! Their hobby of cookie decorating turned them into business owners in March 2020. When orders started to increase, it led them to install a commercial kitchen in their home.

Their baking and decorating talents have been showcased on several Food Network TV shows. Brian appeared on “Christmas Cookie Challenge” in 2020 and then was asked in 2022 to make an appearance on the series premiere of “Halloween Cookie Challenge”. Nick appeared on “Christmas Cookie Challenge” in December 2022. Brian and Nick have won numerous awards at the CookieCon Sugar Shows, including mystery shapes, judges choice and popular vote!

Currently, Nick and Brian primarily focus on cookie decorating classes, combining their passion of teaching and cookie decorating. Connecting with the community allows them to reach more customers and build relationships with different companies and non-for-profit organizations.

Beth owned a mortgage company and decided to trade in the warranty deeds for piping bags. She hasn’t looked back. She is the owner of The Vanillan, a specialty cookie business in Madison, MS. She recently showcased her talent on Food Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge where she won the title of Champion and $10,000. She travels speaking and teaching classes on how to decorate and paint cookies.

Beth loves to volunteer and give back to her community. She is the President of The Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary, she is a board member for the Central Mississippi Down Syndrome Society, reads books to kiddos for Goodwill monthly and is on the leadership team for Reservoir Career Women.

Beth knows that everything she has, does and will do are gifts from God!

Annissa Neufeld of Sweet Wheat Bakeshop has combined her passion of sugar with her marketing degree, to grow her full-time baking business, and now teaches others how to do the same! She is a 2x Food Network winner, a 2023 American Cake Awards Rising Star finalist, and has been featured in various industry magazines. Annissa has taught thousands of students how to cookie better and believes there’s no such thing as gate keeping business secrets. From custom orders to pre-sales, hosting workshops to selling in retail stores, Annissa has done it all but markets and popups have become her favourite and most profitable business adventure yet!

I’m Monek’ Smith, the flour faced girl behind MS Cookie Co. I’m a wife and a mom of 2 from Dallas, Texas. I started making cookies in January 2019 and haven’t looked back. Some of my favorite things are audio books, Texas A&M (Whoop!), friends, baseball, graphic tees, Mexican food, and sleep. My favorite cookies to make are bizarre theme mash-ups that stretch my imagination. I can’t wait to hang with all my cookie friends at CookieCon this year!