When Amy Scott first started decorating cookies, it was just a holiday experiment, but after friends and family responded with unexpected enthusiasm, she decided to give home baking a serious try.

Now based in Silverdale, Scott runs The Coveted Cookie, a home-based bakery specializing in custom-decorated sugar cookies for celebrations ranging from baby showers to birthdays. After operating her business in South Carolina and San Diego, CA during her husband’s Navy assignments, Scott is rebuilding her customer base in Kitsap County.

“Everything I do is custom,” Scott said. “Sometimes people send me reference pictures, and sometimes they just say something like, ‘pink and green baby shower,’ and I run with it.”

Scott, who is self-taught, handles every aspect of the business herself, from baking and icing to communications and packaging. Her creative process starts with fresh dough, mixed specifically for each order. The cookies are shaped, chilled, and baked, then decorated using a two-part icing method that includes outlining with a thicker consistency and “flooding” with a thinner glaze for a smooth, glossy finish.

“Mixing icing colors can be really time-consuming,” she said. “I spend a lot of time trying to get the exact right shade.”

Layering and detailing come next, often with drying time in between. To speed up the process and protect the finished work, she uses a food dehydrator before heat-sealing each cookie in individual bags.

Scott takes the taste seriously, she adjusts her dough recipe by cutting the sugar content in half and uses an almond emulsion for a richer flavor.

“I’ve gotten a lot of praise for the taste,” she said. “People are always surprised. They expect them to look pretty but taste like cardboard.”

Her largest order to date, 150 cookies for a 1970s-themed birthday party, featured hand-decorated vinyl records, disco balls, roller skates and tie-dye shirts. “That one was a ton of fun,” she said. “But a whole lot of work.”

Running a food business from home comes with its share of challenges. In South Carolina, starting up was relatively straightforward. In Washington, however, Scott had to navigate stricter cottage food laws, including a virtual kitchen inspection and updated food handler certifications.

Space has also been a hurdle. “In California, I had the perfect nook right next to the kitchen,” she said. “Here, my kitchen is downstairs and my workspace is upstairs. I had to get creative.”

To keep her icing cool without frequent trips to the fridge, Scott uses an improvised setup involving a pitcher of ice water and a cup to hold the piping bags in between uses.

Despite juggling baking with customer service, invoicing and parenting, Scott aims to keep work contained during school hours. “I try to finish up not long after my daughter gets home,” she said. “I don’t want the business to spill over into family time.”

The flexibility of home baking, she said, has helped maintain that balance. But staying organized, especially during rush periods, remains a challenge. “People will ask for cookies two days before an event, and it’s tough,” she said. “The icing alone needs 24 hours to dry.”

Still, she tries to help when she can. Recently, she filled a last-minute order for a customer whose original baker had canceled. “I could only do a dozen, but he was ecstatic,” she said.

Scott emphasized that her journey has been one of trial and error, from learning icing techniques to navigating food safety rules. But along the way, she’s found unexpected support, sometimes even from fellow bakers.

“People have been really kind,” she said. “Even when I had direct competitors nearby, we’d loan each other cookie cutters. It was more about community than competition.”

Scott moved back to the Pacific Northwest in February, returning to the place where she met her husband in 2012. Now she’s focusing on growing her local presence one cookie at a time.

“I wasn’t too scared to start,” she said. “I figured, if I didn’t like it, I could just stop. But it turns out, I love it.”