Ashlee Christman, owner of Sweet Dough Cookie Co. holds up cookies made for the Food Network ‘Christmas Cookie Challenge’ in which she is competing in, while standing in her Chehalis Bakery.
Cookies made for the Food Network ‘Christmas Cookie Challenge’ in which Ashlee Christman is competing in sit inside her Chehalis Bakery on Tuesday.
Cookies sit on display inside Sweet Dough Cookie Co. in Chehalis on Tuesday.
Ashlee Christman talks about starting her bakery, Sweet Dough Cookie Co. in Chehalis, on Tuesday.
Ashlee Christman talks about her bakery, Sweet Dough Cookie Co. in Chehalis, on Tuesday.
Baking cookies is what makes Centralia resident Ashlee Christman happy, and on Monday, her cookie-crafting skills might also earn her $10,000.
Christman, 26, will be one of five competitors featured on season four, episode four of the Food Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge that will air at 7 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 16. The TV show gives a grand prize of $10,000 to the baker who can knock the socks off of the three judges the most with their cookie-baking prowess.
As the owner and operator of Sweet Dough Cookie Co., an online cookie vendor which has a following on Instagram of nearly 20,000 people, Christman’s 9-to-5 job consists of taking orders from all around the country, baking and designing the cookies, then shipping them to customers.
So needless to say, a cookie baking challenge was right in her sweet spot.
Christman, who is an avid watcher of the Food Network to begin with, said she first applied to be on the show about two years ago — roughly six months after she had founded Sweet Dough Cookie Co. — but didn’t make it. Understandable, she felt, considering she hadn’t been a professional baker for very long.
But then early in 2020, Christman got a phone call from an out-of-state area code number so she didn’t think much of it. When she went to check the voicemail, she realized she had been invited to be a participant on the show.
“I jumped up and down all over my house, I was so excited,” Christman said.
In August, Christman was flown down to New Orleans for a week where the show was taped. For obvious reasons, Christman couldn’t divulge into the details of how the taping went — you can find that out for yourself on Monday.
However, when asked what her strongest trait as a baker is that would show up in the competition, Christman said her ability to decorate cookies quickly was her ace in the hole.
The competition is broken into two timed rounds, the first round contestants are given 90 minutes and in the second they’re given 150 minutes, so working quickly is a critical aspect of the show.
“I knew that I had to bake, decorate, flood everything in that amount of time and I felt like that helped me along the way, like just my speed as a cookie decorator, because I knew I could get the job done,” Christmas said.
If Christman does win the competition, she says she will put the $10,000 back into Sweet Dough Cookie Co. and get a commercial kitchen space that would replace the one she and her family built in the back of her fianceé’s parents’ house.
The quaint, makeshift commercial kitchen shares a roof with her father-in-law’s workshop and she is looking for her own space, should she win. Christman also threw around the idea of a storefront, though has no immediate plans to open one with the coronavirus pandemic still going on.
Christman’s baking talents will be on display for the nation on Monday, but you can see her intricately designed cookies anytime you’d like on Instagram at @sweetdough.cookieco where she promotes her business.
Her company, which she founded three years ago while living in Pullman, Washington, started from humble beginnings — just Christman baking cookies in her kitchen at home.
Christman landed in Centralia because her fianceé is local to the Twin Cities and the couple decided to move back to his hometown after he finished school at Washington State University.
A native of Graham, Washington, Christman says her baking career started when she was a 12-year-old girl taking a trip to Celebrity Cake Studio in Tacoma with her mother. At that baking studio — one she would later go on to work for after graduating high school — Chistman had a revelation about her career as a baker.
“My mom took me there one day and we just sat there for like an hour looking through all their look books, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, mom, I want to do this,’” Christman said.
On the same day, Christman and her mother went out and purchased the baking equipment she needed to whip up her first ever cake. It wasn’t quite the cake that foreshadowed a baking prodigy in the making, but it was a start, Christman said humorously.
“It was the ugliest thing that I’ve ever seen looking back,” Christman said with a smile. “But it just shows you practicing over and over really helps.”
And practice she did. Christman reckoned that a lot of her freetime as an adolescent was spent in the kitchen fine-tuning her baking skills.
High school football games? Sorry, Christman was too busy baking cakes. A weekend party? No dice, Christman had a batch of cookies coming out of the oven and they weren’t going to frost themselves.
Christman was consumed by her art, and as she says, “it paid off.”
On Monday, Christman plans on having a small viewing party with family members. And for the local baker who is making her debut in the national spotlight, it is poised to be an emotional evening.
“I’m sure I am going to cry, I just can’t believe it,” Christman said.
