Windsor attorney accumulates impressive cookie-cutter collection

There are cookie-cutter homes, and then there are homes like Amy Hunsberger’s — filled with cookie cutters.

“I have commandeered closet after closet, but there’s a big collection,” said the Windsor attorney whose side hustle as a baker and decorator has caused what she might call “cookie creep.”

“It gets to be a lot,” she said.

On her website, Hunsberger says she has 500-plus cookie cutters. But she admits she’s stopped counting.

From the looks of the stacks of storage bins in a rainbow of colors occupying her “cookie room,” which is a living area in the back of her home, there must be double that.

The bins are neatly labeled with themes for seasons and holidays, vocations and hobbies. Camping, dinosaurs, dental, music, purses, space, spa day. If there’s an interest, there’s a cookie cutter for it.

And if Hunsberger doesn’t have it, she can find a way to get one.

“My brother has a 3D printer, and if I have a very particular need, he’ll make cookie cutters for me,” she said. Some of his past creations have been of monster trucks and an Airstream trailer.

There are cutters she uses constantly for her custom cookie business, Once Bitten Bakery. Those circles, squares, ovals and rectangles in all different sizes allow her to elaborate on any theme by decorating them with names, slogans, even inside jokes.

One of her favorite recent orders was done almost exclusively on squares, when she used her creative license to make Taylor Swift-themed cookies.

Then there are the cutters that, so far, she’s never used, or only used once.

“I do have a couple I will probably never use again. One is a Hillary Clinton cookie cutter, which is really unfortunate,” she said. “I mean maybe. One never knows.”

The other is the shape of Heisenberg, Walter White’s alter ego from “Breaking Bad,” a gift from one of her children.

“That trend is over. I don’t think I’ll be breaking that out again,” she said.

Some of the unusual ones are timeless, though, like the “Peanuts” set she got before she moved to Sonoma County full time in 2017.

Although she doesn’t collect antique cookie cutters, which some people do, she does have a vintage set that belonged to her mother-in-law.

“They’re the ones with the handle, and they’re closed. They aren’t open; they’re like a little shell. I have a dove, a bell, a star, very typical traditional Christmas shapes,” she said.

Others are irreverent, like her 420 cookie cutters for marijuana enthusiasts or the ones shaped like male genitalia that get more use than she’d care for.

Decorating those is hard — er, difficult.

“Yeah, it’s not my favorite, I’m not going to lie,” she said, giggling. “But I do have a really cute mini one that I throw in with the bachelorette ones.”

A hobby takes shape

Hunsberger got hooked on cookies about 15 years ago when her triathlon training buddy came over with a cookie starter kit and told her she was going to love it. Hunsberger was skeptical.

“I’ve never been a crafty person. This was not me,” said Hunsberger, who is an attorney for the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., a job she’s had for the past 22 years.

She and her friend have long given up their swimming and biking sessions.

“We don’t do that any more,” Hunsberger said. Yet, “however many years and however many missed workouts later, we’re still making cookies.”

Her hobby slowly ramped up, but Hunsberger eventually went all in on the cookie life, attending Cookie Cons. She now hosts her own classes.

There’s even a name for this subculture — cookiers.

“I don’t know what happened,” said Hunsberger about the hobby she initially had no interest in making such a big part of her life. “I think part of it is, it’s a very transient thing, so there’s very little pressure artistically. It’s going to get eaten.”

She also said decorating is a nice outlet from the demands of her day job.

“Watching the icing flow and mapping out what you’re going to do with the cookies, it’s relaxing,” she said.

‘Cookie all-nighters’

That doesn’t mean her side hustle comes without its own pressures.

In her Instagram profile, she calls herself “lawyer by day, cookier by night.”

“There’s a lot of cookie-ing by night,” she said. “There are cookie all-nighters, more than I’d like to admit.

But, she said, she never gets tired of doing cookies.

During the all-nighters, she moves her workshop into the dining room and decorates until the sun comes up. Sometimes she needs to call in reinforcements to get the job done on time.

“I only let certain people help me decorate, and it’s not many people. I fired my own mother,” she said, laughing. “We joke about it that she got fired. But she can tie a mean bow on a bag.”

For the holidays

She began planning the theme and colors for her Christmas cookies well before the icing was ever dry on her Thanksgiving treats.

Using a canvas of sugar and gingerbread cookies, Hunsberger decided to go with a “groovy, retro” theme that includes a Jolly Vibes Only cookie cutter, a smiley-faced Santa and a mushroom, among others.

In all, she estimates she’ll make about 300 hand-decorated cookies and will bake an additional 30 dozen more for 180 do-it-yourself cookie kits ordered by local wineries. That means the forecast for her kitchen this holiday season calls for a flurry of flour, a blizzard of sprinkles and plenty of icing.

“By the time I’m finished with my creative process, I usually have a really big mess to clean up,” she said.

But it’s a happy mess.

You can reach Staff Writer Jennifer Graue at 707-521-5262 or jennifer.graue@pressdemocrat.com. On X @JenInOz.