If you’re looking for an environment full of laughter, community, and yellow frosting, look no further than Williamston’s Twisted Sugar Bakery owned by Trish Adams.
Adams is an entrepreneur and an expert baker. Her bakery is quaint and clean with light blue walls and an array of quirky baking quotes hung up that read ‘sprinkle kindness around like confetti’ and ‘eat cake for breakfast.’ Twisted Sugar offers homemade cookies and an array of lattes, coffee, and comically large milkshakes.
Adams officially opened her bakery mid-September.. Her bakery is thriving, but not in the way she initially thought it would.
“It’s been kind of a wild ride,” said Adams. “It’s weird how this business will take you from what you think is going to be one thing to a total different thing you didn’t expect. I wanted to have lines out the door all the time, then I didn’t get that. I got more custom work and I’m now teaching classes, and that’s more the direction I wanted to go anyway, so I’m liking it a lot.”
This fall, Adams introduced a beginner’s level holiday-themed cookie decorating class in the hopes to bring the community together and teach people to decorate a cookie right in time for the festive season to kick-off.
Adams hosted her first class on Nov. 13 and had a successful turnout. The bakery was packed with about 20 women laughing about their attempts to turn a bare sugar cookie into a yellow sunflower.
“I’ve heard wonderful things about this bakery already,” said Patty Green, who drove 40 minutes to attend the class. “And Trish is serving us crackers and cheese and wine.”
Adams gave each participant about five cookies to decorate for the night. She taught how to delicately paint with frosting, spray the cookies with edible spray paint, and an array of other tips and tricks for decorating a cookie the Twisted Sugar way.
“I love being here with other people and getting to make something that I like,” said giggly 13-year-old Lillian Raines. “And that we can also eat? Duh!”
If you’re skeptical about your artistic talents and your ability to live up to Trish’s cookie masterpieces, the class is for all levels, all abilities, and is guaranteed to be fun regardless of experience level.
“Absolutely come check it out,” said Autumn Scott, a helping hand at the class and a good friend of Trish’s for about 10 years. “It’s not a ton of money, it doesn’t take a long time, and it can’t hurt to learn something new. And if you make any mistakes, you can eat your mistakes. There’s nothing wrong with getting rid of the evidence that you maybe did a bad job decorating a cookie. Practice makes perfect. Even if you’re not an artist, you can do it.”
Adams will soon be offering an array of classes and has big plans for the future of Twisted Sugar. She plans to host more similar holiday-themed cookie decorating classes in November, December, and into the new year. She’s also offering birthday parties for children where they can decorate cookies or cupcakes that they can take home at the end of the class.
She’s shutting down the bakery for the two Saturdays before Christmas to host all-day classes for kids. She even has a few special guests planned for the upcoming months.
“I’ve participated in teaching classes at other events, I’ve traveled around the country with this business for the past five years, so I thought it’d be cool if i did my own classes here and taught them myself,” said Adams. “I’m bringing other people in to help do this and to hold their own classes here as well.”
One special guest, Oklahoma resident Alex Curry, creator of a brand of edible paint called Poppy Paint, will be at Twisted Sugar in May teaching a cake pop class.
Adams is actively bringing her community together one welcoming beginner’s class at a time. She has curated the ideal warm and comforting environment, much like her cookies.
For those interested in knowing how Adams bakes her delicious cookies, most of her recipes are kept under wraps. But she did reveal, in the holiday-themed cookie decorating class, how she makes her vanilla frosting:
Two pound bag of powdered sugar, ⅔ cup of warm water, one teaspoon of vanilla, and four teaspoons of meringue powder.
Maybe if you attend one of Adams’ classes she’ll reveal more top-secret baking tips.