Emily Henegar: The Cookie Artist Behind Your Favorite Musicians

I have been following Emily's work since 2019, when I was living and baking in the Nashville area myself. We actually have a really cool special connection. Emily was part of Nashville Cookie Collab, a cookie collaboration I started to raise funds for victims of the 2020 April tornadoes that hit Nashville. That was such a really cool project, where bakers from all over Tennessee and surrounding states came together, baked cookies, and raised funds for the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. And even watching her work from back then, I knew she was something really special.

Emily Henegar is not only an incredible baker, she is a true cookie artist. And the distinction matters. She has a degree in entrepreneurship from Belmont. Over 230,000 combined followers on social media. She has made cookies for all of your favorite musicians, including Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, just to name-drop a couple. And she's built something that truly didn't exist before she created it. Her business is profitable and it is entirely her own. It was built not by copying someone else's playbook, but by going deep into her passions and trusting that that was a land worth building.

And today we are going to talk about what it looks like to find your niche, build a meaningful career around it, and choose collaboration over competition. Emily, welcome to Proofed.

My goodness, that is such a beautiful intro. Thank you for having me. I'm already so excited. The ideas are buzzing. Every conversation I've had with you has been so delightful, so it's so fun that we get to bring other people into it.

I'm so excited too. I love your story, and delving even more into knowing who you are. Most kids at 11 are eating their mom's cookies. They're not selling them. But you didn't even just start baking at 11. You started your own business at 11. And I just want you to expand on that for anyone who didn't know. Maybe they just know you as the girl that made the Harry Styles cookies, but to give more color to the fact that you are like a seasoned veteran baker here, with business experience.

Very true. Yes. Don't ask me how cheap my prices were when I first started. My dad gawked at the fact that I wanted to charge 75 cents per cookie. He was like, "Um, I think they should really be 25 cents." I'm like, "Have you seen the price of butter?" So, no, Dad.

Long time coming. Exactly. I'm like, get those Walmart prices out of your brain. These are handmade.

Absolutely. Well, yes, I can give a little fly-over view. I started my business, Cookie in the Kitchen, when I was 11. I remember sitting down at my desktop computer with my mom, finding what WordPress blog was still available. And my sister is an artist and drew me a little logo, and we printed out some business cards and just went off to the races. So it truly is baffling that I've been doing this for 15 years.

It's pretty remarkable. It's pretty incredible. And I think you're being very modest, because your first time selling cookies — is it right that you sold 19 dozen on one street?

My mom was like, "That's 19 times 12. We can't go any further. We have to stop." I walked around with her and my little business cards on a little clipboard. And I mean, imagine an 11-year-old in your neighborhood comes knocking on your door and they have a tray of cookies and they're like, "Do you want to get orders?" So yes, it was really fun, an abundant way to kick things off.

For sure. Absolutely. And so, I know you also came from a family of entrepreneurs. Your sister, your grandmother. Is that something you feel like was in your blood, or did it surprise you, coming out like that early?

I think it was in my blood. If you can't already tell from the people that are watching this, I'm wearing a lot of red, and that was always my favorite color as a kid. I just was such a feisty little girl. And my mom said that I was like a CEO in a toddler's body. I just knew what I wanted. I knew how things should be. I knew if it wasn't feeling right, I was going to be vocal about it.

And honestly, the passion was the most unsurprising part. The surprising part has been the longevity of it. Because as I'm sure many creatives can relate to, you have so many different phases — especially with kids, you have so many different phases of what you're into and what hobbies you're about and what you're excited about in that present time. And it was one of those things where I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's been three years and I'm still doing this. It's been five years and I'm still doing this. It's been ten years. It's been fifteen years." It has just been one of those things that has continually been able to literally grow up with me and scale with me and mature with me, and bring in so many other passions in my life, that I've been able to really delight in seeing it expand and always have something new I can get excited about.

But it really was just fun. It's so fun to me that I have such a reference point of little Emily in my work. So many people, we think about our inner child and like, "Oh, how can I access that in what I do?" And I'm like, I literally have photos of her making cookies, and can think about that when I'm stressed out of my mind and I'm like, oh my gosh, she would freak out right now.

That's incredible — what an incredible story. So also, I know when you went to Belmont you chose to study both entrepreneurship and graphic design. And of course, Belmont is known as the school for artists and musicians. And honestly, that combination feels so incredibly intentional and deliberate. How did those two disciplines shape the way you run Cookie in the Kitchen today?

Yeah. Well, interestingly, I didn't know how it was going to go to study business, because I thought, I'm such a creative person. Am I going to hate business? I barely do enough with my business as it is in high school to kind of get by on some of the technical sides of things. Am I just going to want to be in the kitchen all the time?

And that is a genuine, real question for a lot of bakers, because I had someone tell me before I started school that any business is 80% business and 20% creative. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I don't like those odds." That is not a lot of time getting to spend doing the thing that you love. And for some people it is like, I want to spend as much of my time in the kitchen baking, decorating, whatever, doing recipe development or making content — doing that creative act.

And what I really was delighted by learning in school is that there's so much more in how you run a business that is creative, that you get to express yourself in, that you get to organize and figure out how the pieces connect and fit together. So I was kind of going in a little bit blind when I went to school. But I had a mentor at a bakery in Atlanta, where I'm from, who told me before I went to college, "Don't go to pastry school" — which wasn't really my interest in the first place — "go to business school, learn how to run this well. Because if you don't know how to run it well, someone else is going to be running it for you, or you're going to be working for someone else, or you're just going to not be running a profitable or good business."

So the intersection of that was always something that was on my mind, and being very intentional about, I want a balance of those things, because I am a balance of those things. I don't enjoy a week where I'm spending 40 hours in the kitchen. I feel like there's so many other things that I love getting to spend my time on, or that I need to spend time on. But also, if I'm not making cookies at the end of the week, I'm kind of like, oh dang, this doesn't feel as satisfying to me.

So I initially even considered majoring in graphic design and then minoring in entrepreneurship, and then was like, well, I do want to do this for my life. I should probably major in this. And thankfully, Belmont and Nashville, as you said, are so incredibly linked in the intersection of business and entrepreneurship and art, and the business of art. And so I had a lot of reference points of people in a myriad of fields, within the school itself and just in the culture of Nashville — as I'm sure you've experienced too — that ride that line of, we want the craft to be such a highlight. And part of how you help creatives do well, or how you do any creative act well, is providing structure around creativity, to build in those constraints to really let it flourish.

And so I think it was a lot of seeing that balance of creativity and structure and scalability. I did a pitch competition my freshman year, pitching my business, and I think I got second place maybe. But I remember one of the judges wrote "scaling?" on the side of my paper, and I've never forgotten it, because I'm like, it's still the question, eight years later. I don't know. We're figuring it out.

So it's a lot of, okay, how can I have this creative craft — and as you know with cookies, there's so much detail, so much customization, so much labor, so much personalization — alongside this scalability, so that it actually is feasible for you and for your customers, and then also not so scalable that you lose the intimacy or you lose the craft of it. So it's always kind of a tension I've been holding, but it's a fun place to be in. And I think it makes for a really interesting life and business, because the answers are never straightforward. So it keeps you on your toes.

I feel like you've created an entirely new lane. So that's kind of uncharted waters also. And that really leads me to my next question, because you are one of the people at the forefront of something that I think is still being named. It's the idea that cookie decorating has always existed, but what you do feels like high art. It's pushing toward fine art, and toward being recognized as its own category within baking — or even more niche than just being a cookier, but like a cookie artist.

Do you feel that that shift is happening in the community? This whole idea, like you're talking about your professor going "scalability" — it might not be scalable, but building this personal brand and creating fine art is something that could provide for you and be a steady business, a true business in the field of art. And doesn't need to be scalable, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. It's something I've noticed a lot of, because I've been in the industry for 15 years, that I've seen shift and change so much, especially on a macro level. Even just the high points of when I started — there were really only cookie bloggers. That was what I was familiar with, like SweetopIa, Sweet Sugarbelle. They were doing a lot of color mixing tutorials or icing consistencies or "use these cookie cutters."

And then around like 2019, 2020, once Instagram Reels became a thing, TikTok became a thing, then businesses and artists became like, now we're making content alongside of this. That is really when I saw the industry kind of explode into not just more people — the barriers to entry, or familiarity with cookie decorating, becoming more of a focus and customers being interested in it — but especially the artistry of it, as you're seeing people's process.

And also 3D printers becoming so accessible as well, and opening up cookie cutter shops, because literally we're not making cookie-cutter designs anymore. You are making your own custom shapes. I feel like there was a pretty consistent cookie style that existed in the early 2010s when I was first starting. And I'd say about five years into that, when I was starting to notice the intersection of graphic design and cookie art, was when I started seeing a lot more. And also Procreate becoming an app that people were familiar with and using, and just those technologies becoming cheaper and more accessible to people, is really when I saw the industry just explode with so much personalized style that made me so happy.

And especially with COVID changing so many industries for so many jobs, and people starting cookie decorating as a hobby and then being like, "Wait, I could do this as a business," and people coming from so many different fields — I'm sure you know, and I know cookiers that are like former hairstylists or architects or designers or corporate workers. There's so many different places that people entered into this from, and they bring that particular skill set and lens and style, and that has just been so fun to witness. It's brought so much creativity to the industry. I follow a bunch of cookiers on my cookie accounts, and it's so cool to see the different styles and trends that people pick up on and iterate on each other.

So I think that even just in cookie art in and of itself, and then you also bring in fine artists — I will scroll on my account and I'm just like, my jaw is dropping seeing some of these things that people make on cookies. I'm like, I've been doing this for 15 years and I can never do that. That's crazy, just from the different skill sets people bring, or their aesthetic eye. So I have really loved seeing how much personalization, not just for clients, but in cookie artists just making cookies for content, that even feels like something new in the past two to five years that I've seen. So yeah, I could talk about this a lot. I think it's so interesting.

It really is. I love seeing it too, and it's definitely evolved so much over the past 10 years.

So there's still this undercurrent in the industry where some home bakers feel like they almost need to apologize for not having a commercial kitchen, or they don't have a brick and mortar yet. But you've built something that is truly professional from home. How do you think about that perception gap, and has it ever gotten in your way, not having a brick and mortar? Has that been something you faced? Or not really — because truly, you are a professional artist and you're creating something really meaningful as a home baker. And I think that opens up the concept that being professional from home is very legitimate.

Yeah, totally. Thankfully, it really hasn't gotten in my way. And if anything, I say own it, because it's impressive. People will be like, "Wait a minute, you make these out of your house? This is crazy."

And I think even with the cottage laws, I feel like that has changed so much to give a lot more freedom, there just being more opportunities for home bakers. That has been really cool to see. Or on social media, just seeing people's renovated garages into cookie studios and other places. I think it's just so fun to see what people are able to do.

And especially when I was in college at Belmont, I didn't have an oven my first year, and was baking in friends' apartments and houses. And then I would take them back to the tiny kitchenette in my dorm room and be decorating cookies when someone would come in at like 2:00 a.m. to make a toaster quesadilla. I'm like, I don't even know how to explain to you what's going on in here. I made cookies for, I guess, Travis Scott for Bridgestone Arena in that kitchenette. I'm like, this is kind of crazy.

Now, also, be thoughtful about the cleanliness of these places that you're using, of course. But yeah, I mean, it's mind-blowing.

As someone who's baked with kids and had to figure out logistics — the logistics of having to figure out baking in your friend's kitchen, then bringing the cookies back. I don't think anybody, unless you're a baker, knows. It's like, Emily doesn't take excuses.

True. No matter what. Exactly. And honestly, I felt it then when I was doing it, where I'm like, I know there's going to be one day where I'm going to have this beautiful, lovely kitchen that has ample space. And I'm not there yet. And honestly, so be it. This is fun in its own way, because it's almost laughable how not ideal it is, but it makes for a great story.

And I think the nice thing too about making decorated cookies — and just cookies in general — but most of the time that I'm spending on cookies, as you all know, is decorating. The amount of time that I'm actually at an oven and using a lot of kitchen tools, it's probably a quarter of the process. So what's nice about that is that does give you some freedom. If you're just working on the cookie canvases, I feel like I have a little cookie studio.

And I've always experienced that as well, because when I was in middle school and high school, I was baking in my family's mudroom, because my mom's allergic to gluten. So I was using our oven, but kind of decorating everything and preparing everything in our mudroom. So I always kind of was working in very odd constraints, and with roommates around me and with my family. And it really did make me learn how to work with what I've got.

And there's something that I think is impressive to other people to see what you do, and also to myself. It really does give me just the confidence of, oh yeah, I can work anywhere. I could do this anywhere. I want this enough to make it work.

And like you, I had another friend once that was seeing me bake cookies in my teeny tiny — probably a thousand square foot house with a shoebox kitchen — for two years. I made 8,000 cookies out of our tiny kitchen, one tray at a time. Never multiple in the oven, which is wild. And she is an artist as well, and said, "Seeing you work out of this very non-ideal scenario is really inspiring to me to work in whatever ways I can."

And it does make me just really grateful being in a space — I'm still out of my house, but have a much better setup. And I do feel really grateful for the room to breathe and grow, and to film content with good lighting now and not these sketchy setups.

I felt that so hard, because you know, when I restarted Sprinkle Me Sugar and I'm baking macarons, our little alley kitchen was so tiny and so small. I've got three small children in the home. I'm having to bake at 3:00 a.m. to try to get the shells out and done before they wake up in the morning. And the tiles cracking on the floors, cabinets are coming off the hinges and things are falling apart because of the sheer brute amount.

And so I am like, you are a woman after my own heart. Because it feels so lonely in those moments when you're just hustling, non-ideal. And I was like, one day I'm not going to be up at 3:00 a.m. and I'm not going to be in this ugly kitchen. And since then, we've remodeled our kitchen. We have a lot of natural light. Of course, I have my own storefront now. But getting through those two years was so hard. But I love the hustle that you have, because I see myself in that too. Because it's so hard, but you love what you do. You're passionate. You're driven by something so outside of yourself that this is going to happen, you know? I love that.

Absolutely. Even in my old shoebox kitchen, my mixer — our cabinets were uneven, they were slanted, and my mixer would only fit at this one particular spot in the kitchen because it was too tall to fit under where it was not level. And even that little detail, it made me laugh so much, because I was like, wow, only this place, only this particular way. And we couldn't close the cabinet drawers unless the measuring cups were stacked in this particular order. It was just so silly, but it really did make me grateful for, wow, this place was made for this moment and for this thing. And God knew that the cabinets were going to be not level and my mixer was only going to fit in this one particular way.

And thankfully, culturally, home bakers are very well respected because of that. There's a lot of us, and so people are really familiar with it. But I think there's also a level to whether or not people are coming in with any conceptions of like, "This is really impressive," or "This is kind of sketchy" — to either extreme.

I work with a small business strategist, and she has said to me in a number of different ways: people will treat you how you train them. And so if you are kind of like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, ignore the mess, ignore these things, it's not my house, whatever" — that's how people are going to treat you too. And so if you come at it with a high level of professionalism on all fronts, of your communication and your messaging and your social media presence or your website or your branding, whatever pieces are customer-facing —

I mean, I even had someone in high school, I was like, "Oh yeah, I'm ready to take your order, but I've got to check with my parents first." And she didn't realize I was in high school. She was like, "Wait a minute, why do you have to check with your parents?" And then I've also had people come and pick up cookies and they're like, "I thought I was looking for a storefront. I didn't know if I was going to knock at some random person's house. Why is the address here?"

So again, it's just kind of a laughable moment. But I do think, yeah, use it as an opportunity to just excel on every front, to make people feel like, wow, I know that I'm getting a really high quality product and service from you.

Absolutely. I think, just to expand on that, the most amazing artists and bakers I have seen have been home bakers. They're able to do so much from their homes. And definitely don't sell yourself short because you don't have a commercial kitchen or storefront. I actually see that it allows you to be so niche, and it allows you to be the master of your art form. You can't get this in a store, you know? You can't get from the commercial bakery the level of intention and care that's put into it. And I completely agree with you — it's how you frame it. So use it as your advantage.

I want to delve more into your background in graphic design, because I don't know that everyone understands how graphic design has truly influenced your cookie art. I know that it's very much so a part of how you do everything. You took a graphic design class in high school — is that where you got introduced to graphic design, from what I understand? And then something clicked where you're like, this can apply to decorating cookies. Will you tell me a little bit more about that?

Absolutely. Yeah. My mom actually was the first one to kind of notice the parallel as I was talking about it, because she was like, "You're really doing graphic design on a cookie." I design all of my cookies on Illustrator, actually, and have full-on mockups of them, similar to how a lot of cookiers will use Procreate to sketch everything out.

And yeah, that just really clicked for me in terms of my skill set. Because my sister is a very talented traditional fine artist, drawing and painting, and that just never really made sense to me. I can't look at a blank sheet of paper and draw someone's face. That's just never going to be how I am skilled. And it doesn't excite me. I mean, even you can see that I rarely do faces on my cookies, because the line of getting it to look recognizable, like a person, is just so fine. And when you're working on a teeny tiny, smaller than a penny sized amount of icing to make someone's face, I'm like, let's just not. And there are some people that love doing that. I'm like, that's great, you are so talented and I will be so impressed.

But for me, graphic design is really just like, oh, I so understand the principles of design here in terms of composition and color and balance. And that also gave me a lot of freedom to do that before I'm making cookies. Instead of doing a lot of that creative decision making on the cookies and making a lot of mistakes, or like I don't know exactly what I'm working with — I have such a clear idea, because a lot of that creative process is happening before I'm even getting into the kitchen.

And I think a lot of what I am looking at when I'm making a set is very informed by those aspects of design, of composition and balance. Even how many detailed designs am I doing versus how many simple ones — that's also a business question too. Because I don't want to kill myself doing crazy detailed cookies. And I'm sure everyone has had the experience of like, well, they only paid for this simpler tier, but I kind of want to do these other things. And then you get to the end of it and you're like, why did I give them all of this free stuff that they didn't even ask for? And it was kind of fun, but I also feel like I didn't make that much money on it, which doesn't make me feel great, and they're going to expect this the next time.

So I feel like I've had to kind of learn to work off of those constraints too, that I built in, to really keep myself in check. Because I could take a theme someone gives me and go absolutely crazy, to the walls, with all of the ideas. But also, sometimes I just like being like, okay, no, I'm giving you three colors and three shapes and I'm going to work from that, and it's going to be a lot easier for me to do.

So I feel like I'm thinking a lot about that, a lot about color palette and style. I just recently made a new order form too, and had asked my clients to pick between different adjectives. So like between muted and vibrant, or between graphic and organic, or classic and playful. And that has also been a really helpful reference point, because I do have a very clear defined style that most people can see, but I also want to orient around my customer, to what they're interested in, what they like. And so that's given me some fun tools to work backwards from.

I also just love getting the physical product that you're making, versus if I was just a graphic designer, it's just living on a computer, unless you're making stuff for merchandise or branding or whatever. But it is really special to go from, oh, I saw this, and then I took it out of my computer screen and here it is in front of me.

It's pretty incredible, learning more about your process and all the intention that goes behind all of that. I want to move a little bit more into your niche and what you do. You love music and going to concerts. You love baking. You love art and design. Most people would have those as separate little things, like, "Oh, well, I bake and maybe that's my career, and then these are my hobbies." When did you realize they could all be one thing — that you essentially are like, I'm going to take all these things that I love and I'm going to make a career out of it?

Yeah. I mean, what's really funny about it is that over the course of time, I didn't go into this being like, this is exactly the niche that I'm going to do, and this is my 10-year business plan and exactly how all of these things are going to overlap and how I'm going to scratch all the edges and all of my different buckets of passions.

I think so much of me being young while I was doing this, and am doing this, has been that opportunity of, you're just not overthinking it as much. And you're like, "Oh yeah, I like listening to music. I like going to concerts. I'm noticing graphic design looks like a cookie. This album cover looks like a cookie. What if I put it on a cookie?" I'm not like, "Okay, well, what's my return on investment in this and what could this look like?"

But I think a lot of how I am wired too is I just love seeing the crossover and overlap between different industries and artistries. I just think of it as a Venn diagram too, where a new circle will kind of come into play, and I'm really delighted that cookies is often at the center of those Venn diagrams. Like, oh, I can access this part of myself. I can do art. I can bring in music. I can bring in customer experience. I can bring in business, or I can bring in my love for gift giving, or whatever it is.

And sometimes that is segmented more for people. But oftentimes too, there is this unique place where whether or not you're really actively bringing in a big passion of yours into something, it's going to inform it no matter what. And it was a lot of just being like, oh, this has somehow connected and there's an opportunity here and I'm just going to run with it.

And there are plenty of things too that I do in my life that aren't connected to this, or that I'm like, I don't need to monetize this, or I don't need to make this a part of cookies. But yeah, just thankfully there's been a lot of opportunity to kind of carve out that niche. And I do think when you're working at a small scale of being a home baker, you don't have to think about that giant return on investment, because you're not working with so many constraints or bureaucracy or overhead or whatever it might be that could limit you from finding that.

I was thinking about you as an 11-year-old and getting started and just going after something you love. You learned that it was okay to go for something that you loved at a very early age. And when you did that, you were met with success. And then you kept trying things.

And I think sometimes, when we start things and we're older, we're so afraid of failure that we don't even try. We don't even try to do the things that we love, thinking that, what if I just do it for fun? And if it fails, it fails. And if it doesn't, let's see how it goes.

And for me, I see you as someone who has just been very bold and has gone out there and chased their dreams and not been afraid to try things. And I love that. And I think it's just truly inspiring. I think people could learn so much from that. Because often we are so afraid of failure that maybe we don't go, "Oh yeah, I'm going to bring these cookies to this concert," not knowing anybody, and see if the security guard will give them to the band. And if nothing happens, nothing happens. But if it does —

So many times we allow the voice in our head to go, "Don't do that. What will people think? Don't bring the cookies. What if people think you're trying to be someone you're not," or this or that, and they don't do the actions. And you've gone out and you've just been bold and you've done it and you've loved stuff and you've been unapologetic, at least from the outside looking in. You've been unapologetic about being yourself. And I think that that's what has made you so successful.

And I will say too that some of that is also that I haven't had this bigger goal that I've been reaching towards. Sometimes it is — for me a bakery has always been a big picture dream goal that I'm kind of oriented towards. And there have been some of those things along the way. But one of the reasons why I was able to be so bold in bringing cookies to concerts was not that I was like, "Oh, I'm trying to get these to Taylor Swift one day." I was just like, I like this band. I want to make cookies for them and this is fun. And at the end of the day, I got to make cookies for my favorite band and I can post it on Instagram or whatever.

And so there was so much joy and passion in the thing itself, no matter how it did or how it was received. And of course, that does inform it, and that helped spur on a lot of my desire to do it more. But that's part of, I think, the boldness of it — knowing this is going to be fun no matter what.

It makes me think of Alysa Liu at the Olympics. She was talking to someone about how she felt about performing —

Oh my gosh, I could talk about her for so long.

And she said, "I'm already at the Olympics. This is amazing. Anything else is just wonderful." And she loves her craft so much at figure skating that she's like, "I don't care about — I want to do a good job. I want to do this well. I care about the craft of this and I care about it connecting to people. But in terms of the medal at the end of the day, that's not what is actually going to satisfy this in me."

And so I think that is something that I would really encourage. And that it's not just the "go for the thing and have this big dream" — yes, that's such a part of that, and that was such a big drive for me to continue to do it. But also, there was just love and delight in the thing I was doing, in and of itself.

And that particularly, I think, for the music industry — and I think especially if you are trying to make something happen and you are trying to grow — people can definitely tell when you're in it for the wrong reasons. And they can absolutely tell on the other side when you are just so passionate about something and you're so open-handed about where this is going to go, or trying to connect with people. You can't make that up. And that also has to come from something that is so particular to you, that you can't find that and pull that out from someone else. There might be a business opportunity that you see, but the actual passion that is coming from you — that really does give you such a competitive advantage, because no one can come up with your passion for this and your precise way of being interested about it.

I love that so much. And I love how you brought up open-handed, because as I understand, you have a tattoo on your arm that says "open-handed." And I love the way that you've described that, as being open-handed and receiving and giving. You have been someone who I think is known for their generosity — with other bakers, with just your time, with your presence, with the intention that you put into your cookies. Where did that philosophy come from, and has it ever cost you anything?

Yeah. I mean, definitely my philosophy has come from my faith, being a Christian, and truly just believing all of what I am receiving is a gift. And 15 years of a business really does make me just look through and be like, I could not have made this happen of my own accord. When something so big is like, you get commissioned by Nissan Stadium to make cookies for Taylor Swift — I couldn't have made that happen. Yes, I did the hard work and I put myself in these places, but there are doors that are being opened to me that I could not have really tried. The ease of that is so notably beyond me.

And that, I think, has fed so much into this. Because from day one in my business — and I just celebrated 15 years in February and I had a party in Nashville and a party in Atlanta — I can just look through every single year of my business and every stage of it to see, who are the people that God put in front of me that are so generous with their skill set, with their connections, with their wisdom, with just their support and cheerleading of me? I really have no ability to see it without the support of that.

And whether that's your spouse or your kids that are supporting you and cheering you on or helping you in whatever way, or it's your friends that are in your Instagram comments, or the random person that's connecting with you that you're like, how did this even come to be? Or your customers, of course — it's like, I couldn't do this without you. I would not have a business if you weren't here to buy cookies from me. And to see there is so much generosity that is already poured into this.

And what a gift also to be in the baking industry that is so centered around gift giving and generosity. It blew my mind one day when I thought about, oh my gosh, baking is intrinsically a generous act, because you are rarely ever baking something just for you. It is almost always to share with other people, and to bring to light and to add that little moment of feeling seen, or feeling cared for, or just something special and sweet in someone's day.

So I think I've just gotten to experience that so much. And I really think when you have received a lot of generosity from people — and I challenge you to think of a lot of ways that you have, more than it might seem obvious — it really does make you want to give that back to people.

And especially on the business side too. I've had so many advisors and people that have been remarkably generous in a way that makes me want to be like them. It shapes you so much. I remember I interned at a local bakery, Baked on 8th, when I was a junior at Belmont, and the owner told me that his accountant was talking to him and was like, "So why are you helping this girl? Because she is your competition." And he was like, "She's doing a completely different thing. She has her own niche. And at the end of the day, I believe in her and I want to help her. And I have tools that can help her do that." He's not going to lose out on the business or on those skills.

That is such the beautiful thing about a gift economy. It's so generative. And there's a difference in sharing your almost trade secrets, giving everything about how you do what you do — but mostly when you're connecting with people, you can see the ways that you're wired differently and the different passions that they have. And there is absolutely overlap in what we do, right, but also very different niches. And the ways that I can support you and you can support me look really different.

It's a lot more fun to be generous than to gatekeep.

Absolutely. I completely agree. I think you are definitely evidence of that in every single thing that you do. Thank you for sharing all of that.

Absolutely. Thank you.

I know this wasn't all an immediate download, that you knew you were just going to have this very specific niche. But you could have also just decided very practically that, hey, I'm just going to do birthday cookies or baby shower cookies like everybody else. Why didn't you pursue that? Starting out at 11, you were doing something similar to that, but very quickly you started moving into a niche once you were in Nashville and making cookies. And ever since I was following you, you were making these really cool, distinctive musician-related cookies.

Wanting a balance of a lot of different types of clients, too. And I like to say that my mission is to make people feel like celebrities and make celebrities feel like people.

And that didn't come about originally when I started. When I was in college, I took one of my top entrepreneurship classes, and my professor was kind of pushing me to think through: what is actually the problem that you're solving here, and what is the value that only you can bring — your unique value proposition, or your competitive advantage here?

And there's some obvious answers of like, the skill, the experience that I have, or that I'm doing this niche of making cookies for musicians, or the design experience, or the quality or caliber or whatever. But there's something beyond just that. One of the things he kind of used to help me see that is, really getting anything custom — and particularly ordering cookies — is so much more about the experience than it often is just about the cookies. Because if you just wanted cookies, you do not have to pay this much to get something to fill a dessert table.

There's something more that speaks to people, that resonates with people, than that. Because it wasn't ever really like, that's the problem that I'm solving, that people just need cookies and I'm here for that. Again, that would be Walmart. And I would say that no home baker is really doing that. There are layers underneath this that you can speak to.

And what hit me — I remember calling my mom after that class, just buzzing, being like, "Oh my gosh, the experience that I'm providing, and really the problem that I'm solving, is that people don't feel seen, or that what they care about, people also care about."

And when you feel like someone gets as excited with you about something that you love, it just is so delightful and filling to be like, oh my gosh, you're caring about all of these details here. That's my favorite thing when I make cookies for a musician or for anybody, and they're looking at all of the details, and I'm like, oh my gosh, you noticed this thing and this little detail. Or, "I can't believe the level of detail that you went to, making this album cover look legit. You even got this little random thing that we photographed that we were going to edit out." Just little details like that.

And to show someone that you care through — whether for me a lot of that time is the level of detail or level of research that I'm putting in, but that could be any part of the experience — but really realizing that I'm selling an experience for people totally shifted my perspective and truthfully everything that I do and how I run my business.

I changed a lot of the way that I talk to my customers, or the copy on my website, or the decisions that I'm making about how my ordering process is working, what are the emails that I'm sending to people. Because if I know that I want this person to know that I am deeply excited to celebrate with them, that's going to change everything more than it is about the cookies that we're making at the end of the day. It's almost like the icing — literally the icing on top of the cookie at the end of the day — is that that's what they're receiving.

And that is just something that I love to do. Again, I think it's central to gift giving, that you're able to pull something out so specifically about someone and reflect it back to them. So I think knowing that was something that I wanted to do, or that I was already doing, gave me an opportunity to really work backwards from, okay, what are the things that let me do that, and that I can do really well? And how can I be not just known as the celebrity cookie girl, but known as someone that makes people feel seen and cared for?

And when people see me seeing them in that way, I'm like, oh my gosh, that feels so much better than, "Oh my gosh, your video went viral or something." That's going to feel great to be acknowledged in that way too. But there's just so much of a deeper level of connection that it resonates in. And it really does just spur you on so much. How I feel after a pickup where someone is just glowing in delight over this — I could go on that high for the rest of the day.

And I used to be like, am I being selfish that that's my favorite part, is when people see the cookies? Because they're just telling me that they look good. And sure, that's part of it too, but we're just getting to connect over this third thing, and it's just such a magical moment. I want to do it all the time.

So that really, I think, has given me the opportunity to carve out a niche in these other ways. And then it really is just the particular network and opportunities that come in, and where the money is on the business side of things too, in terms of how I've crafted that.

And it has been a lot of slow growth as well. I mean, I see businesses and cookiers that blow up immediately, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that has never really been the thing for me. I feel like I have had those moments of growth, but I feel more like somebody like Chappell Roan, that has been in the industry for 10 years and then has her moment and really gets to find her people then. There have been times where I felt like it's grown past me and been a lot to manage. But on the whole, even working in the funky kitchens or finding the systems that work for me on the back end, the constraints of those things have helped me grow and scale in a more manageable way than being thrown into something.

Absolutely. I love your mission statement so much, where it's like, I make celebrities feel like people and people feel like celebrities. It's just such a powerful thing.

And learning about your process, when you were commissioned to do these cookie sets — and not just for celebrities but for people. You say you love it when moms will give you a paragraph on their kids, and you can implement all these details. I was like, oh my gosh. This reminded me of the book Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, and just all the details and intention that go into hospitality.

What you do as a cookier — most people might not go, "Oh, she's in hospitality." But you absolutely are, because you're creating an experience for someone. People aren't buying sugar and butter and flour made into these cookies just to consume a sweet treat. They're buying this experience. And so I'd love for you to elaborate, for anyone who hasn't heard all the details, of all the details that you go into.

Oh my gosh, you're probably going to hear my rate of speech go up, because I get so excited talking about this. It's one of my favorite things.

And I absolutely have read this book. The amount of annotations I had on every page, and just exclamation marks and underlines. I'm like, yes, yes, yes, exactly. You get it. And really, if you want to get embedded in a story of someone that has had a lot of success in a particular niche, and really in that shaping of, this is an experience first and the way that we do that is through food — read that book. It's so beautiful to see the ways that he learns those lessons through the experience of a lot of trial and error too, and having a dream but also seeing how it goes.

And yeah, one of my favorite things that I kind of fell into, I think particularly because of being a fangirl — and fangirls are known for going a little bit crazy and knowing all of the lore and the details. I was never a huge One Direction person or big artist fan when I was growing up. I honestly had a bit of the Nashville, "Oh well, I know this band that you probably don't know." Blame it on my dad's indie music taste. But it wasn't until a little bit later that I started getting more into mainstream artists and being a fan in that avenue too.

But nonetheless, when I started making cookies for musicians — I mean, so many things. One was just the visuals of their world, and the history of that, and how that shifts over time, and how they find their style and hone in on it and reflect something intangible through a tangible medium, and bring a bunch of other artists and voices into that. So that in and of itself was already interesting to me.

And then just learning their storyline of, how did they get to where they are now? What are these key moments in their life? And then when you also add in the layer of, how does their fan base shape this? What is the fan base connecting to or giving meaning to, that the artist maybe never would have thought would have been a key part of their brand or something that people connect to?

And so that has been kind of embedded in me since day one, of just going really deep and learning all of those little intricate details about people. And then what was just fun is, as I was doing that, I was like, wait a minute, there's a way that I could bring this up to the surface and kind of call this back in my cookies.

So for a band, that could be like, I make a cookie of their first ever single cover that is scrubbed from the internet but somehow still exists on SoundCloud and I have found it. Or I scroll to the bottom of their Instagram and I found the house that they started their band in, and put that on a cookie. And if any of you all have heard of Nardwuar, this is something that he does. He goes into insane research to where the artists are like, "How did you know about this? That is crazy." Kind of insane.

But that was a big part of building my mission. Because as I started doing that with musicians, I started realizing I could do that with people too — well, they're still people — but with my regular customer base, I should say. And call out those little details of, this is something that they mentioned in their order form.

Someone ordered some Taylor Swift cookies from me for The Life of a Showgirl album release, and she sent me a photo of her daughter holding up a little sign that said "Texas loves Taylor Swift" or something like that. And so I just made it as an extra cookie on a post. She wasn't asking for that, but it was just there. She just gave me that information and I'm like, well, it looks like a cookie. I could just do that for her as an extra one.

Sometimes this will be client specific, where they'll give me some of those details because I kind of left room to call out on it. I added a question to my order form recently too, that was just like, "Just for fun, tell me why this celebration is special to you." And I had it as an optional question at first. I've never had anyone skip it, because everyone loves to share about this meaningful moment. And oftentimes they'll give me little nuggets of something where it's like, "Oh, I'm really excited about this holiday because we're also celebrating my sister having a baby." And then I'm like, oh, what's your sister's baby's name? And then I'll put that in a cookie or something. And just the surprise and delight of, I wasn't expecting that, I didn't think that you were going to pull that out — is really meaningful.

I even made cookies for my grandparents recently, just for fun, because I hadn't done any before. And I pulled out a quote that they say often. My grandfather loves a hummingbird, and so put that on one. And my grandmother loves hands, so I did that with a quote that she loves and a photo of the two of them.

And to feel like someone has done that level of paying attention — my grandmother likes to quote, I think it's Simone Weil, who says attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. And so, back to being generous, that is such a way that I get to do that. And it's just so fun. It never gets old. I always just feel like a little light bulb goes up over my head when I'm like, it could be a cookie.

I'm so excited for this new life that's entering into your life on a baby shower — not just, "I hope you have a great party," but hey, this is signifying something much greater than this. How can you call that out in people? And that's really how you make people feel seen. And it really is just a lot of listening, and then it's just fun to figure out how to present it in a way that kind of startles people.

It's incredible. It makes me think also — I don't know if you've read any of Seth Godin's books, but it makes me think about how he talks about emotional labor. This emotional labor that you put in, just listening and seeing someone and then translating it, which is really something you can't put a price tag on at all.

What you're doing is so much more valuable, and such a more human experience, especially in an age where everything's faster and AI can take over and do things. Having these conversations about what it means to be human, and what you're doing as art and also something that's consumable, and baking and all these things. To me it's just one of the purest forms of human expression and art and love. What you do is your expression of love to the whole world, and it's very beautiful to witness and see.

That means so much.

So we're closing up this conversation, which makes me so sad, because I feel like I could talk to you all afternoon about this.

Same here.

But we started this conversation with 11-year-old Emily going door to door with a clipboard, getting her 19 dozen orders. If you could go and sit down and have a conversation with her right now, what would you tell her?

I think twofold. I would just love to tell her — I would just love to name-drop all of the people and see her face. I would love to go to 16-year-old me and tell her that, because I think she would just be dumbfounded. That would just be really fun.

Favorite artist, right?

Yes. I mean, it's pretty crazy. I feel like my mind — bucket list — I've gotten to check a lot of artists off. From Taylor Swift to Harry Styles, Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney, Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan. Oh, there's Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter. I think Sabrina Carpenter is so wonderful. I just want to meet her and just talk about all her artistry. I think she's so fun.

I mean, granted, some of those names she probably wouldn't know, but I think at this point she would just be very delighted by that.

And then I think to my 11-year-old self, I just would be like, thanks for being bold, and thanks for giving me what I needed then and what I still need now — as that reminder of, at the end of the day, it's just cookies and it's just fun. And what a gift that we get to do something that is so rich and delightful. And it absolutely makes such a difference in my life and in so many other people's lives. It's not just a frivolous thing, but really speaks to so much more and is able to call things out.

So I just say thanks. I think it's just fun. I'm like, you're still hanging out with me in the kitchen all the time. And honestly, when I am getting really stressed about stuff, it is a really great reminder to just be like, 11-year-old Emily knew that all I had to do today was mix a bunch of colors and sit and decorate cookies. She'd be like, "Oh my gosh." Especially me when I was a student and having to work in all of these funky times and manage school alongside it. So I'm like, yeah, I get to do this all day long. I think she'd be like, that's so great.

Honestly, I feel like you must be so inspiring to a whole new generation of girls and boys out there that don't realize that they can just go for their dreams. And you have carved out this beautiful path for yourself that is uncharted, and you're living your best life, and it's so inspiring. And I think that there's just a whole generation that can see you and be inspired by that also.

So — rapid fire questions.

Let's do it.

All right. So what's playing in your kitchen right now?

Oh, so many things. I love Holly Humberstone's new record. She's really fun.

Great vibes.

I'm curious if this is the same for you, but depending on what I'm doing in the kitchen or what I'm working on, I'm listening to different things. So like when I'm mixing icing, I'm standing up, so I'm usually listening to pop music because I can kind of dance around. And then when I'm sitting down to decorate, I'm like, okay, I've got to lock in and put on an audiobook. If I'm sat there for like 10 hours decorating cookies, or if it's really late at night, I'm going to binge a bad TV show that's not going to require that. I literally watched the entirety of Off Campus in one sitting on one cookie order. Not because it was that good, just because I needed something to keep me awake.

Even an audiobook or podcast.

Exactly.

Last thing you ate that was not something you baked yourself.

Ooh. I live close by to Forevermore Coffee, which, if you're in East Nashville, is so wonderful. That's where Raina and I last hung out. And they have a really great selection of baked goods. So I think I had their banana chocolate chip muffin and an iced coffee with, I think, strawberry cold foam. Or a cappuccino, that's usually my order. So, would recommend for sure.

Chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin?

Chocolate chip. I'm sorry, I'm kind of an oatmeal raisin hater. I just don't like raisins.

Same. Crunchy or chewy cookie?

Can I say a secret third option, that's fudgy? I love Levain Bakery's cookies in New York. They're like my gold standard. So I love crunchy on the outside, well baked, but fudgy on the inside. That's my dream.

And then, cake or pie?

Probably cake. Love it.

Quick plug, by the way — if you're in Nashville, or if you need a cake decorator to follow: Mads Eats. She is one of my friends. She's so talented. You should honestly interview her next, because she's so great. Oh, probably her cake, I would say specifically.

Yes. What flavor?

Oh, she's made a tiramisu cake that is just — I mean, she's like a whiz in the kitchen in terms of flavors and such. So yeah, would recommend.

Yum. Now I'm hungry.

Yeah, same.

Well, thank you so much, Emily. Honestly, it is so much fun getting to talk to you. Thank you so much.