Abbey Kowalec: the Artist Who Bakes for Dior and Netflix, Creating Art on a Cookie

Holding a piping bag filled with white icing and wearing black gloves, Abbey Kowalec began decorating a plain cookie, millimeter by millimeter. Soon, it became a purse wallet with a red handle, textured flowers inside and leaves. Almost every cookie is unique, so Kowalec will use at least 30 colors for this batch, and a Westchester family will be happy to pay $250 for a dozen.

Earlier that morning, Kowalec–who founded Angel Baked in 2023, a custom cookie business in midtown Manhattan–met online with Dior to discuss the 156 cookies it needs at its Fifth Avenue store for an event. Kowalec, seated with one leg up, wearing flip-flops, agreed to prepare a sample.

Very quickly Kowalec, 30, a professional dancer turned painstaking cookie artist, has drawn luxury brands clients, including Givenchy and Saks Fifth Avenue, along with Netflix, Burger King and Redbull. L’Oréal has sent Kowalec’s cookies to TV personalities including Kelly Ripa and Bethenny Frankel.

Before heading to this year’s Met Gala in an Oscar de la Renta gown, Kris Jenner also received a gift from L’Oréal: cookies depicting her previous outfits for the event. Impressed, Jenner described them on Instagram as “amazing.” Her handmade work includes replicas of Picasso paintings, wedding gowns, interior designs, and architecture. Kowalec’s favorite part of the process, besides her hyper-realistic sugary details, is to see someone’s reaction to her cookies. “People are always amazed and really happy with the result; I love seeing that,” she said. “Being able to find that one gift that will stand out amongst all the packages is what is key, and Abbey has assisted in making that a success,” said Morgan Montgomery, senior account executive at ABMC, the PR agency that coordinates L’Oreal’s gifts for celebrities who, she said, are “inundated” with presents.

Angel Baked fills seven to 10 orders a week, ranging from one to five dozen cookies, at prices ranging from $150 to $250. To keep pace, Kowalec works 18 to 22 hours a day, waking up at 6 a.m. “I think because I get so involved in my work, the time goes by quickly, so I don’t notice it,” she said. Finishing the first cookie she started, Kowalec washed her pastry tools and cleaned her kitchen before starting on a new cookie. She was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck, and silver hoop earrings, with red nails, natural makeup, and a dancer’s bun.

Growing up in Connecticut, Kowalec started dancing when she was three years old. Soon, her mother drove her to dance classes in New York City while she did her homework in the car. At Marymount Manhattan College, she earned a bachelor’s degree in dance. “She is one of the most hardworking people I know,” said her friend and frequent customer, Maci Arms. They met when Kowalec, a professional dancer for six years, was on the Knicks City Dancers NBA team. Arms remembers Kowalec’s auditioning and training for the Rockettes until she got the job. “It was amazing to see all of her hard work pay off,” Arms added. Yet in 2020, she tore her ACL, a knee injury, in the middle of a Rockettes show.

After two surgeries and the “most difficult” period of her life, Kowalec started looking for another career. “Starting something new was more exciting than trying to pursue something that felt that my body kept rejecting,” Kowalec said. She had baked for teammates and friends as a hobby, but when she started regularly posting her creations on TikTok, people started asking how to buy her cookies.

“I found that there was a high demand for what I was doing.” Now, listening to a Chill Mix playlist from Spotify, Kowalec considers herself more an artist than a baker, “but I think my medium is cookies.” From the beginning of her business, she has been subject to the city’s home processing regulations, which allow her to deliver only within New York State. “I would love to be able to offer my cookies worldwide for people to enjoy,” Kowalec said. Her Cookie Lab, also her one-room apartment in midtown West, is decorated in beige, white, and light gray and features dedicated corners for each cookie-making step. In the kitchen, always spotless as Kowalec is constantly washing equipment and cleaning the space, the fridge is stocked with pre-baked cookie dough ready to be cut. One cupboard stores her cookie cutters organized by category: “flowers”, “weddings” and “Western.” In a corner of the living room, a 3D printer can create new cookie cutters. She decorates the cookies near a living room window, spending hours painting, drawing and perfecting every detail. Usually, Kowalec creates by hand; sometimes she uses a projector for precise shapes. The apartment smells like a sugar cookie, even from the outside. “That smell of cookie, you just can’t help but think of family,” said Montana Shugars, who works with Kowalec, helping her with tasks like dough prep and making icing. “It just brought a lot of joy into my life to be able to come here and feel like I’m a part of someone’s dream,” Shugars said. The cookies measure 3.5 to 4 inches, with a soft, chewy texture even when frosted. “Everyone assumes decorated cookies are rock hard, but these are not,” Shugars said. To Kowalec’s frequent customer, Amy Keogh, “they taste as good as they look,” although sometimes, “I don’t even want to eat them because they look so pretty.” She learned of Kowalec’s work through social media: Angel Baked has over 175,000 TikTok followers and 76,000 on Instagram.

“In a world where it’s sometimes hard to wow people, she is an easy go-to for a special gift,” Keogh said. Angel Baked has a waiting list, turning down three orders weekly because it can’t take additional customers. To avoid continuously thinking about cookies, Kowalec takes breaks throughout the day. This afternoon, she bought an iced coffee and a chocolate peanut butter bar at the corner Starbucks, then took a 20 minutes walk, passing residential buildings and stores, “just to get out of the apartment and get some fresh air.” For now, Kowalec continued decorating the batch she started this morning for the Westchester family, taking five to 20 minutes with each cookie. Besides the purse wallet, Kowalec made a dog cookie–and a US Open cookie with rackets, a trophy and tennis shoes. Three hours later, she finished and started packing, slipping each cookie into an individual plastic package, all of it going into a gift box with ribbons and her card: Angel Baked.

To complete the delivery, she headed to the building lobby and handed over the order to a waiting driver. “That’s it”, Kowalec said, smiling. Next, she started an order for a client’s godmother’s 70th birthday and an order for the food chain Sweetgreen, which asked for a replica of its harvest bowl salad, a realistic apple, and vegetables. That night, Kowalec managed four and a half hours of sleep. The next morning, she started all over.