Jenny Cookies Bakeshop makes dough with sugar, butter in Lake Stevens

LAKE STEVENS — Sugar. Butter. Style.

Jenny Keller has built a sweet career using that recipe.

The 36-year-old baker and blogger opened her bakery, Jenny Cookies Bake Shop, in December in Lake Stevens.

The bakery is a huge step in Keller’s career in sweets, which started a decade ago. It’s located at 12420 20th St. NE, Lake Stevens

Before Keller started selling sugar rushes, she was satisfying caffeine fixes. “All I wanted was my own espresso stand,” Keller said.

After graduating from Western Washington University in 2002, she owned and operated a stand in Marysville for four years. She sold the stand and became a stay-at-home mom after giving birth to her daughter Ally in 2006. It was a difficult transition.

“I’m a doer, not a sitter,” Keller said. “I found myself watching ‘Regis and Kelly’ and walking into Starbucks because I had time. I needed a creative outlet.”

Her husband proposed that she start baking as a new hobby. He brought home a cookie cookbook. But Keller was disappointed in the recipes. It wasn’t until she discovered her mother-in-law’s old family recipe for smooth buttercream frosted cookies that she knew she had landed on something special.

“It was October, so it was a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter,” Keller said. “It was pumpkin, after pumpkin, after pumpkin. That cookie cutter turned into a Thanksgiving one, then Christmas, then it was for my daughter’s first birthday. I started bringing them to my neighbors, and to church. People started asking for them. It just grows.”

Keller’s mother proudly named the popular treats “Jenny Cookies.” In 2006, Keller launched her blog, “Jenny Cookies.” The blog combines her love of cookies and other desserts with a carefully crafted vintage aesthetic. Keller was also at the forefront of a new trend: dessert tables, stylishly spreading a variety of desserts at parties.

“No one was doing that back then,” Keller said. “They’d come to parties and be like, ‘Why did you make all of these desserts? Why are you doing this for your daughter’s second birthday?’”

Now, people approach Keller asking “how” not “why.”

Jenny Cookies exploded after a friend introduced a batch of Keller’s cookies to actress Tori Spelling, from the trendy ‘90s TV series “90210.”

“I thought, ‘They’re gonna go right in the garbage,’” said Keller. But Spelling raved about the cookies on social media. She invited Keller to Los Angeles to bake cookies and help her design dessert tables for her son’s birthday party. She eventually contributed the dessert table ideas in Spelling’s cookbook.

“Every time I’d go, I’d meet someone new. It kind of blossomed from there,” Keller said.

Spelling credited Keller as a baking “genius” in her 2012 book, “CelebriTORI.” Keller released own book, a cookbook called “Eat More Dessert,” in 2014.

It includes her iconic sugar cookie recipe, and ideas for themed parties and dessert tables. Keller hopes to keep her bakery and blog businesses separate. She entrusts her employees with management of the shop when she leaves town to work with brands. She said she’s collaborated with companies like Bath &Body Works, Nordstrom and Amazon. She said she regularly receives orders for tens of thousands of cookies. The original purpose of the bakery was to fulfill those mammoth corporate orders.

Keller didn’t envision the current space being open to the public. There’s no seating. Lines frequently extend out the door and around the building. Nevertheless, people are thrilled to be lining up.

Keller designed the bakery with the same vintage aesthetic she used when she renovated her own home, a farmhouse located five minutes from the bakery. Keller lives there with a her husband Dan, a mortgage banker, daughter Ally, who is now 11, and son Hudson, 8, and three goats.

Jenny Cookies Bake Shop is lined with large windows, which bathe the entrance in sunlight and make the sprinkled confections sparkle.

Behind the marble counter, employees talk to customers and primp cookies, cupcakes and crispy rice treats. They wear black aprons emblazoned with the logo, a mint-green rolling pin.

Some, Keller included, wear black shirts printed with one apropos word: “COOKIES.” They were created by Keller’s sister, Emily, who owns an apparel business and works at Jenny Cookies Bake Shop part-time.

Keller recently introduced the “pie cookie,” a gluten-free mini-pie stuffed with fruity fillings.

A peanut butter-and-chocolate crunch dessert is included in the Hawks Box, a Seahawks-themed dessert box with a variety of the most popular treats, shaped like footballs or covered in blue and green frosting.

Keller plans to host her cookie decorating class, which she’s taught for years, at the bakery once a month. She hopes the location can become a one-stop-shop for holidays.

For Valentine’s Day, the bakery will release a “Sweetheart Sampler Box” and a themed menu. Pie cookies were imprinted with the word “LOVE,” and sugar cookies manicured with pink, flower-petal-shaped frosting.

Aaron Boren owns an insurance agency across from Jenny Cookies Bake Shop. He visits the bakery frequently with his wife and two sons.

“We love the cupcakes, obviously, but what sets it apart is Jenny,” Boren said. “To be able to follow a business on Instagram and see what they’re up to then stroll into the store and buy that cake in the picture, or snag those cupcakes she just blogged about, creates a full experience.”

Jenny Cookies Bake Shop sells custom cakes, starting at $72. Cupcake frostings range from the standard chocolate and vanilla to generous hunks of chocolate chip cookie dough, blends of whipped cream cheese or buttery salted caramels.

Each sugar cookie costs $3.25; cupcakes sell for $3.75; cake pops for $2.50; and dipped crispy rice treats for $2.75.

Keller hopes to extend her presence throughout Western Washington.

“I see us opening a second location very soon,” Keller said. “We’re able to change. But we’ll always have the same sugar cookies.”

To learn more

Jenny Cookies Bake Shop is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday 12420 20th St NE. To contact the shop, call 425-322-4847 or visit the website atwww.jennycookiesbakeshop.com