Art and Baking Mix at The Cookie Studio L.A.

Hilary Gudgel, the owner of The Cookie Studio L.A.

By Laurel Busby

News & Information Editor

Behind a door at 436 Entrada is a small cookie shop open to those in the know.

The Cookie Studio L.A. offers both classes in cookie decorating and freshly decorated cookies to celebrate everything from baby showers and holidays to big corporate events, such as Netflix movie premieres. Because the proprietor, Hilary Gudgel, works solo as she bakes cookies for varied occasions, she doesn’t always have individual cookies on hand to sell to passersby. Yet, if you notice that her door is open or even just cracked, you might be in luck, and, during the coming holiday season, she plans to have holiday-themed cookies on hand daily from October through December.

In addition, she’ll be offering either Halloween- or Christmas-themed cookie decorating classes every weekend for the next three months, so students can learn to decorate cookies using a step-by-step method that creates surprisingly good results, even for novices.

“I can’t think of anyone who has left and wasn’t excited about how well they did,” Gudgel said. “If you break everything down into bite-size pieces (I guess pun intended), you’re going to be successful. I have customers who’ve been here seven or eight times.”

Each year, Gudgel bakes 9,000 cookies for classes, do-it-yourself kits, and events that can be as simple as a home birthday party or as elaborate as the L.A. Opera simulcasts at the Santa Monica Pier. She also offers occasional pop-ups, such as an Oct. 25 event at her home studio from 9 a.m.-noon.

An assortment of decorated cookies from The Cookie Studio L.A.

For the events, she takes “naked cookies,” a favorite of her husband, Tim, who prefers cookies uniced and fresh out of the oven, and decorates them with designs that can take anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes to apply. Using a precision machine that recreates photos using food coloring, she might also place images of book covers or logos onto cookies, while a 3-D printer allows her to invent custom cookie cutters, so that, whatever a customer might dream up, she can create.

“It’s such a joy for me,” said Gudgel, who grew up in Seattle, then lived in Santa Monica and Palo Alto before moving to the Canyon nine years ago. “I love welcoming people into the studio and showing them something that I love. I’m sharing a passion.”

A maker who enjoys both baking and art, Gudgel stumbled onto her love of cookie decorating after reading an article about royal icing, which is a blend of powdered sugar, water, meringue powder, and flavorings, such as vanilla. Unlike buttercream frosting, royal icing hardens, so cookie decorators can apply multiple layers to achieve an intricate look, just as painters might do on a canvas.

After a period of experimentation, Gudgel began sharing her creations with friends, and, soon, they were asking to buy the colorfully iced vanilla brown sugar cookies. As a result, about 7-1/2 years ago, she started her company, then named Cookies Are Everything, and obtained business licenses in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. She noted that she also got a cottage food operating permit so that she could make the cookies from home.

The Cookie Studio L.A.’s decorating classroom

About 2-1/2 years ago, she opened the home studio, so that she could offer decorating classes, and she simultaneously changed the company’s name to The Cookie Studio L.A. Throughout the years of her cookie operation, she said that taste has been just as important to her as the cookies’ look.

“Sometimes people feel like decorated cookies aren’t really delicious,” Gudgel said. “I feel that taste is the most important thing. When you’re selling a food product, it needs to be good and also beautiful.”

To achieve that goal, Gudgel, who has two children, September, 22, a recent Univ. of Oregon graduate, and Elliot, 17, a senior at PaliHi, makes everything from scratch, even bulk orders of hundreds of cookies. She also strives to bake cookies as close as possible to the date of an event, whether a large corporate team-building exercise or a weekend cookie decorating class, so that they are as fresh as possible.

One repeat customer is The Canyon Alliance board member Miriam Bookey, who has been to two of Gudgel’s cookie decorating classes. One class was part of a birthday party with an Alice in Wonderland theme. The attendees were women in their 50s and 60s, and Bookey said that the group had a blast.

The classes “were utterly delightful,” Bookey said. “And they were some of the best tasting cookies I've ever had in my life…. Hillary was a great and patient and fun teacher. Totally aspirational.”

Most of Gudgel’s approximately three-hour classes are limited to seven students, as the cozy studio has a table for eight, including Gudgel. During the classes, attendees, who are usually adults, will socialize and connect as they apply layers of icing to six different cookies, such as various Peanuts figures for Christmas. They then allow each layer to dry while they work on the next cookie.

Gudgel’s goal is to ensure that each person has a great time and leaves with lovely and tasty cookies.

“If you go fishing and you don’t catch a fish, it’s not fun,” she said. “If you come to my studio to decorate, you really want to feel that you’re leaving successful. Are you going to feel like, ‘Hey, I learned something and I was successful at this?’ Absolutely.”

To contact The Cookie Studio L.A., email hello@thecookiestudiola.com, or visit the website: thecookiestudiola.com.

A happy student, Miriam Bookey, with her Alice in Wonderland cookies.