Three Birdies Bakery owner invites all to play with their food during cookie decorating classes

Ask Jamie Roberts what she does for a living and she’ll summarize her work as “I get to essentially draw and color all day.”

In a few more words, as the owner of Three Birdies Bakery, Roberts designs and decorates cookies.

Lots and lots of cookies. More accurately, between 1,500 and 2,000 cookies a week.

What began as something she did with her children (aka the three birdies) for fun turned into a small business almost eight years ago when Facebook friends commented on photos she posted of her cookie creations that they would buy her treats if possible.

Roberts decided to sell what she thought would be a few cookies to friends around Valentine’s Day but ended up with orders totaling more than 400 cookies. As more and more orders rolled in, Three Birdies Bakery came to be.

Years later, Roberts now shares tips and tricks for those looking to get creative in the kitchen through cookie decorating classes hosted at the Kitchen Engine. Roberts’ next class, Nov. 17, is all about decorating cookies for Christmas.

Even before she taught formal classes, Roberts has always been happy to share tips with anyone who asked. There were few local resources when she started Three Birdies Bakery, so Roberts had to learn things like where to purchase supplies and different techniques on her own.

“I’ve always been an open book even to other cookie businesses here in town where it’s like ‘If you need help with your (cottage food permit) or where to get stuff, I’m an open book, so come ask me, and I will tell you because it was really, really hard for me to figure it out from ground zero by myself,’ ” she said. “If I can help somebody a little bit, even if they’re my competition, it makes a bigger table for everybody. I would rather do that than somebody suffering by themselves and scrambling like I was.”

The Kitchen Engine reached out to Roberts about teaching cookie decorating classes three years ago, and she’s taught, on average, 20 to 25 classes a year since then. Her classes tend to be themed around holidays and seasons, like winter-themed in January, Valentine’s Day in February and St. Patrick’s Day in March.

In the spring, Roberts teaches a Mother’s Day class, before taking the summer off from classes. Her September classes are fall-themed, October is all about Halloween, and November and December center on the winter holidays.

No matter the theme, Roberts can visualize several potential final designs for a cookie before she’s even prepped the icing. She realizes not everyone can approach a cookie in the same way though and draws designs on cookies used in her classes with edible markers so students have a guideline to follow.

She likes to stress at the beginning of each class though, those guidelines are suggestions, not rules. If a student wants their cookies to look exactly like those Roberts is using to demonstrate techniques, great. If not, that’s perfectly fine too.

“That’s part of my spiel at the beginning is, at the end of the class, I don’t care what their cookies look like,” Roberts said. “It is a very safe space. I’m not on some pedestal being judge-y like ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe they didn’t get that.’ I want to make sure that they feel like their cookies can be perfect, their cookies can be a hot mess. I don’t care. I just want them to have a good time.”

When students take her class, they’ll see a personalized cookie with their name on it at their place setting. They will also have six cookies, blank save for the drawn-on design, and all the icing they need to decorate the cookies.

Roberts shows students how to cut open the bags of icing and gives them time to practice techniques on a practice sheet before moving to the actual cookies. From there, she shows the class how to create the first layer of each design, before returning to each cookie and adding details.

Again, students have a lot of creative freedom in Roberts’ class. In each class, she tries to offer one cookie that is truly customizable. In her previous Halloween-themed class, it was a jack-o’-lantern-shaped cookie. In this Christmas-themed class, it’s a Christmas tree-shaped cookie.

“For the Christmas tree, it’s like ‘This is how I decorate it. It’s your Christmas tree; decorate it however you want. You don’t have to do this, but this is how I designed the example,’ ” she said.

Depending on how many questions students ask, how focused students are and the pace of the class, classes can range from between an hour and a half to two and a half hours.

Roberts said that to say she’s obsessed with Christmas is the understatement of the century, so she puts “a lot more extra oomph” into the winter holiday-themed classes.

“I have opposite seasonal depression, where in the summer, I hate it but once it gets cold in the wintertime, I’m out of my shell,” she said.

While her cookie decorating classes are beginner friendly, Roberts said she hears a student say at least once per class that they understand why people choose to pay for Roberts’s cookies instead of making their own after seeing the work required to decorate a cookie.

Roberts does custom orders along with her weekly work and Kitchen Engine classes. Those looking to order cookies from Roberts for the holidays should do so before Dec. 1 so they’ll be ready for holiday events and celebrations.

Roberts wants students to walk into the classroom with the mindset that is free of fear about perfectionism. Her classes are a relaxing way to spend an evening by yourself or with a friend or loved one, a chance to do something fun and creative, a chance to forget about the stressors of the world.

“As adults, we don’t really get to do a lot of stuff where we can be like ‘Hey, sit down for two hours, be a goofball, play with your food and be creative and draw,’ ” she said. “So it’s a nice opportunity to be like, ‘Come be an idiot with me, goof around, have fun for two hours where you just make something.’ Be creative. Don’t think about all the garbage that’s going on in the world for two hours, just come and create cookies.”