CELEBRATE CREATIVITY WITH CHRISTMAS COOKIES

How to make holiday treats look, taste professional.

Every Christmas brings magazine spreads and Instagram feeds overflowing with photos of rolled cookies cut into adorable shapes and decorated with all manner of artistry. I admit, I turn the page, scroll on past. Cookie dough you have to make, then chill, then roll out to an even thickness? And then cut out and carefully transfer to a baking sheet? And then try not to overbake? All that to get to the fun of decorating? No, thank you.

Then I was introduced to Marietta “maker and baker” Sam Opdenbosch of Sam’s Cookie Company. Opdenbosch had just placed second in the advanced decorating competition at Cookiecon, a cookie art convention and show that’s held around the country. She won in the Dallas competition this past October. Her winning entry? A whimsical 3D cookie ice cream truck with ice cream cone headlights, an awning over a window filled with more ice cream cones, and chocolate and gum paste balloons ready to carry the ice cream truck up into the heavens.

Victoria, Texas, is where she learned to bake cookies. Each Christmas, she’d get together with her mother and sister and bake cookies. They’ve been doing this for 12 years, and Opdenbosch says, “Every year, the cookies looked like a 4-year-old made them.” Mother and daughters would research year after year and trade techniques, but it wasn’t until they attended Cookiecon in 2019 that Opdenbosch was inspired to take her cookie creations

to a new level.

Working in the commercial furniture industry, she decided that her holiday gift to clients would be beautifully decorated sugar cookies. “After all, you cannot be in a bad mood when someone gives you a cookie.”

With techniques she taught herself and lots of practice, she developed what came to be called “Sam’s cookies,” as in “Are those Sam’s cookies?”

Not only did she make cookies, but she used her 3D printer to design and create unique cookie cutters. Now the only limit was her imagination. Instead of spending hours searching and hundreds of dollars purchasing someone else’s cookie cutters, she could make her own.

Sam’s Cookie Company officially launched with a private Facebook community and a Cookie University with baking and decorating tutorials as well as tutorials on designing 3D cookie cutters and access to hundreds of cutter files created by Opdenbosch.

STYLING BY SAM OPDENBOSCH/PHOTOS BY CHRIS HUNT FOR THE AJC Sam Opdenbosch, known for her original creations, learned to bake cookies in Texas, where she’d get together with her mother and sister every Christmas. “Every year, the cookies looked like a 4-year-old made them,” she says.

Using her icing bag tool as a sort of paintbrush, Sam Opdenbosch works on one of her cookie creations in her home kitchen in Marietta.