CookieCon 2024 Austin Core Classes
What are Core Classes?


We are delighted to introduce the Core Instructor line-up for CookieCon 2024 Austin in ! Each instructor brings their unique and specialized skills and experience to create a broad variety of classes to our attendees.

Your CookieCon ticket gives you access to learn from any of these core instructors! You will choose a Class Track, which is simply the order in which you see the Instructors. Class Tracks will be available to choose beginning at 7pm CT. Just log into your account and pick one. If you don’t have an opinion, we’ll choose a track for you.

If you'd like even more learning opportunities, check out our Classes page.



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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!

Class Description:

The Art of Cookie Realism

Keep it REAL with sugar cookie sisters Maya and Murrah as they walk you through their creative process for incorporating painted, patterned, sculpted, and scraped textures - transforming cookies into realistic works of art! Known for their design focused unconventional cookie art, this class will help you set your cookies apart with fun, simple, and impressive techniques that will leave your friends and clients asking, IS THAT A COOKIE?! Get ready to celebrate thinking outside the cookie box while embracing imperfections along the way!

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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.

Class Description:

Photo Philosophy

Your cookies are baked, decorated, and ready to make their debut. Now what? Brittany will walk you through how to take your beautiful cookies and make them shine in your pictures. In this class we will discuss philosophy of arrangements, props, phone settings, editing, and more. Whether you are a hobby baker or run a cookie business, let’s make your cookies the star of the show!

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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!

Class Description:

Next Level Edible Art

Who said being “extra” means extra work? You too can take your cookies to the next level from “just cookies” to edible art by adding texture, dimension, character and find your own signature medium and style. You will learn about many simple techniques and minimal effort ways to create maximum impact.

Pinar will show you some clever techniques which can be used to curate and create designs and styles for various occasions and themes. Whether you are a beginner or seasoned cookier, Pinar will share with you her creative process and how to achieve detailed designs with minimal effort.

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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.

Class Description:

Social Media Strategies

We are all familiar with social media as a fun and entertaining medium for posting content, but do you know how to use it as an effective tool in building and growing your cookie business? Join me as I teach you some great social media strategies for success in business. While the focus for this class will be tools for success on Instagram, I will also touch on Facebook and YouTube to help take your social media accounts to the next level!

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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!

Class Description:

Sweet Preservation

What happens when the cookie crumbles? When you work with an edible medium, deterioration is inevitable…or is it? Join me as we review some of the top preservation options to extend your cookie-life. We will dive into the process of how to protect your cookie art from decomposition, as well as discuss tips and tricks for different applications. Not all products are created equal…I will help you navigate through some of the more popular options available to help you determine which effect is right for your project. Watch how this process opens the door to a cookie-evolution, turning your edible art into story-telling, functional décor.

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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.

Class Description:

That's so cool. Can it be done with Royal Icing too?

... the bad news? Probably not. The good news? IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE! There are so many other edible mediums that can be used on cookies, that not only taste amazing, but also adds different textures for different designs. In this core class, I'm going to show you how I use different mediums (such as chocolate, rice krispies, vanilla fondant, modeling chocolate and more) to make some of my hyper-realistic food cookies. In this case... PIES!

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Wendy is the owner and creator of Wendy’s Cookie Studio, located south of Atlanta, and one of the founders of Cookie Better, a cookier’s resource to making more of your cookie business. Wendy teaches classes online and in person. Owning a business had been a goal since college where she studied business and finance. Decorating cookies created the perfect combination of business, design, and creativity.

Wendy grew up in Orlando, FL and loves the beach. She is the mother of 5 kids (3 boys and 2 girls). Her husband is a football coach and high school teacher. When she’s not running kids to soccer practice or to football games, she enjoys yoga, reading, and spending time with family and friends.

Class Description:

Finding Joy in the Creative Process

Inspiration starts it all! The process keeps you going! Come learn about the creative process and design elements that give us direction and peace of mind. We’ll discuss where to find inspiration from color palettes to textures, and how to use it to create cookie designs that have a piece of you in them. Joy and inspiration can be found no matter what we are going through. We can use that to inspire others and create joy. When you share what is unique to you and your love of life, the creative process never gets old.

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Justine Banks, the owner of The Cookie Bank, turned her post-partum cookie decorating hobby into a business starting in 2015. Her business really took off when she was asked by the local sports Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah to create custom curated cookie sets for all the celebrities who come to perform there. Because of this opportunity, Justine has had the privilege of making personalized sets of cookies for artists such as P!nk, Justin Bieber, Sir Elton John, The Backstreet Boys, Adam Sandler, Ariana Grande, Post Malone, and many more.

Justine made her TV debut in 2021 competing on Food Network's Christmas Cookie Challenge, and was invited back in 2022 to compete on a brand new Food Network show, Halloween Cookie Challenge. This time she claimed the $10,000 prize and title of "Halloween Cookie Champion."

Outside of cookies, Justine is a wife and the proud mother of two sons and one daughter. She loves to fill her free time by either being physically active at the gym, or by binging a new netflix show and eating Cake Batter ice cream with fatty chunks of cookie dough. It's all about balance, right?

Class Description:

3D Cookie Creations

From 3D sculpted hands made of cookie dough, to life-size cookie armadillos, to hanging cookie chandeliers, Justine has experimented with many forms of 3-dimensional cookie art. If you have ever wondered how to create a 3D cookie creation then this class is for you! Come learn about Justine's trial and error methods and all of her top takeaways for constructing 3D edible art.

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Hi Ya'll, I'm Summer!

Wife, mom, hustler, beach-lover, and passionate creator behind Summer's Cookie Academy, Next Level Cookie Club and Cookie Classes to Cash!

I am obsessed with teaching moms like you all about beautiful cookie creations. And as an enneagram 7, maybe sometimes a little too obsessed. It's baked into my soul to help teach, inspire and empower women - so you, too, can live out your unique cookie-goal lifestyle.

I've helped hundreds of ladies uplevel their cookie skills, techniques, and bank accounts - and am a true believer that...

Anyone can create gorgeous and yummy cookies if they have the right training and support.

Because that is the thing about personal growth - it helps you think bigger, worry less, and live happier.

If you allow me to show you, I'd be delighted to explain how I plan to help you experience just that.

Class Description:

How to Make More Money While Making Less Cookies

Making sugar cookies can change your life, but when you learn how to scale your cookie business, it REALLY changes your life and your business. Through learning how to diversify her cookie business, Summer started changing the lives of others while earning even more, moving the bar higher and higher for her revenue, and offering new and exciting options for others to do the same. She will teach you how to get to that half-million dollar mark in your business by sharing her experience and knowledge on how to diversify income and add streams of revenue to your cookie business. You'll leave with a head full of ideas you can't wait to put into action as soon as you get home!

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Kimberly Houston is a retired Le Cordon Bleu certified pastry chef, educator, author, and multi-preneur leading a movement focused on empowering women to manifest the life of their dreams. Over the last 10 years, Kimberly has built two online baking academies, three blogs, an inspirational podcast, five online masterclasses, a content creation business, and a digital food photography studio. She has also published 2 books, a text book; Teach Me How to Bake, and has been a main stage speaker at several industry conferences.

She holds a BA in Organizational Development, an MEdu in Adult Learning & Instructional Design and is currently pursuing a Masters in Transformational Leadership and Coaching. By combining all of these skills, Coach Kim is helping sweet makers elevate their businesses by encouraging a mindset shift, improving their photography and helping them create multiple streams of income.

Class Description:

Mastering Cell Phone Photography

Mastering cell phone photography is a course that teaches you composition, styling and lighting. As a retired pastry chef and former custom cookie decorator, I understand the joys and struggles of getting the perfect shot. This class is created you in mind. It won't matter if you take the photo at 10pm or 10am you'll leave with instantly better photos.

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Hi everyone! I’m Andi Kirkegaard of Kirkie Kookies! I am a performing and visual artist, turned “Cookier” with a background in fine art. When I stumbled into the world of cookie decorating back in the Fall of 2017, I took my love of art and transitioned it from canvas to cookie and never looked back. I am known in the cookie community for my photo-realistic works of edible art! Since 2017, I have amassed over 100K followers on Instagram, I won 1st place at the Sugar Show at Cookie Con 2019, and most notably I was a judge on Food Network’s Holiday Special “Cookie Wars” and a Cookie guest-star on Nickelodeon’s “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate.”

I used to live in Los Angeles but moved back home to Colorado during the Pandemic and I am currently the proud teacher of my online 'Kookie Decorating Classes'. I simply adore taking my passion for cookie decorating and making it fun and accessible to my students, world wide! When I am not decorating cookies, I still have a strong love of performing and singing and you may have seen me on TV in Lifetime and Hallmark movies as well as singing my heart out on the stage at Disneyland, where I used to work.

I absolutely love that I stumbled into this incredible cookie community and I am so honored to be a Core Instructor here at Orlando Cookie Con 2023. Come say "Hi" - I can’t wait to meet you all!

Class Description:

“Is That Really a Cookie?!” ~ The Art of Painting Photo-Realistically on Cookies

Do you want to take your cookie decorating to the next level? Have you ever wanted to make a show-stopping, photorealistic cookie but don’t know where to even start? Then this is the Core class for you! In this class, we will be covering all the fundamentals of where to begin creating a photorealistic cookie. From analyzing and breaking down a reference photo, to the basics of color and light theory and how it applies to successfully painting on cookies, you will learn it all from Andi!

We will also discuss the best materials for painting on royal icing using gel colors with regards to water vs. alcohol and other edible solutions. Let Andi help you break down and strategize your approach to painting photo-realistically on cookies so you can leave your friends, family and social media following wondering “IS THAT REALLY A COOKIE?!”

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Sam Opdenbosch is the owner of Sam's Cookie Company and has been baking cookies for over 13 years. She started making them to take to her clients for her sales job. Clients were asking more about her cookies than the products she was selling, and they soon developed a life of their own!

In 2021, Sam appeared on Food Network's Christmas Cookie Challenge to compete for a $10,000 prize. With her incredible 3D snowman cookie, she was able to claim the title of Champion and take home the prize money that she donated to frontline workers and pet shelters.

After spending a significant amount of money on cookie cutters, Sam was determined to figure out how to design, model and 3d print her own designs. In that process, she found that finding help and resources for modeling and 3d printing was difficult. So she created Sam's Cookie University to empower other bakers to do the same.

Sam has a passion for teaching and helping others achieve their cookie goals and so do her cookie friends; Wendy, Shelly and Erin so they created Cookie Better to help cookiers just like you!

In her spare time she likes spending time at the lake with her husband, playing with her kitties, and binging shows on Netflix.

Class Description:

All Things Cookie Cutter

No matter your skill level or experience with cookie cutters, the All Things Cookie Cutter class is perfect for you. This class will give you everything you need to know about using cookie cutters both at a basic and advanced level. We will discuss the different types of cookie cutters available, explore all the different ways to use them, and even go over some of the most versatile cookie cutters every baker should have in their toolbox. With so much delicious information about one of the most essential baking tools, this class is sure to be a sweet success for all!


CookieCon 2024 Austin Class Tracks
All CookieCon Attendees will be assigned a Class Track. You will have the opportunity to select your own class track if you wish. This is essentially the order in which you can attend Core Classes, and when your breaks are.

You may want to select your Class Track based on your chosen Electives.