Although I had nibbled on her scrumptious cookies and read about her store in the newspaper, I’d never heard the story of nationally award-winning baker Ashlee (Christman) Shirer’s journey to living her dream as owner of Sweet Dough Cookie Co. in Chehalis.
On Thursday evening, at the Lewis County Association of American University Women (AAUW) chapter’s meeting, Shirer described how her childhood love of baking cakes and cookies propelled her into the national limelight and gave her the opportunity to live her dream.
“I think it’s amazing,” said Shirer, 30. “I must have just got lucky and hit the jackpot because I get to be home at 4 every day and visit with my son and be a mom and be a wife and make dinner, but I also get to have my dream, too.”
Aided by a PowerPoint presentation, Shirer described how her mother encouraged her.
She and her husband, Tumwater teacher Dugan Shirer, have an adorable 2-year-old son and are expecting another child in February.
“I’m a wife and a mom first, and a business owner second,” she said.
At 13, her mother took her to a bakery in Tacoma where they looked through books at decorated wedding and birthday cakes for two hours.
“I was totally amazed that you could turn art into something edible,” she said.
Afterward, her mother took her to Michael’s where they bought fondant, spatulas and everything she needed to decorate cakes and cupcakes. At 17, as a high school senior in Puyallup, she obtained a business license under her mother’s name and began selling cakes, which helped pay for her education. She’d found her passion and, after graduating from high school, worked in a cake studio. She followed her then-boyfriend to Pullman, where he played baseball while pursuing an education degree at Washington State University. She found a job in the Safeway bakery.
Scrolling on Facebook, she discovered a cookie decorating video, said goodbye to cakes for a time, and launched Sweet Dough Cookie Co. in 2018. She gave out samples and used social media to spread the word about her online decorated cookie business.
“I would ship my cookies all over the United States — New York, Texas, Florida,” she said. “They would order on my website.”
She thrived on the artistic challenge of creating cookies based on a theme her clients requested.
“I just loved how each cookie was its own canvas, and I just went from there,” she said. “I went wild with it.”
After a few years, her phone rang in 2020 — a California number. She answered the call from the Food Network, which invited her to compete in its Christmas Cookie Challenge.
“I stopped in my tracks because, from the time I was 5 years old to now, Food Network has been the ultimate goal,” Shirer said. The network flew her to the competition in New Orleans, picked her up at the airport, and filmed her decorating cookies during the magical show.
“It was just such a cool experience,” Shirer said. “I somehow won.”
The contestants for the $10,000 prize wore Christmas sweaters even though the show filmed in August. She said she’s glad the cameras didn’t show her sweating in the kitchen.
She returned to the Northwest and continued baking and decorating cookies. Six months later, the Food Network called again, inviting her to compete for the $10,000 prize in the all-star episode in 2021.
“I somehow won that too,” she said. “I am definitely retired from competing because the anxiety and stress of competing is another level of stressful.”
She would be happy to judge, though. One of her judges was Ree Drummond of the Pioneer Woman fame.
“It was very cool to meet her and talk to her and see her in person,” Shirer said.
Shirer then started teaching people how to decorate cookies themselves. She decorated cookies, posted photos of them on Facebook, Instagram, and her website and offered decorating classes.
“I wasn’t sure if anyone was going to show up the first time, but I had 60 people,” she said, noting she taught at the skills center in Puyallup. “It was the coolest experience.”
She loved seeing smiles on students’ faces when they saw what they created.
Six years ago, she started attending Cookie Con, cookie conventions throughout the country where she networks with others who shared her passion for baking and decorating cookies.
“It’s been very fun,” she said. “I love teaching so much.”
Two weeks before her wedding in July 2021, she passed a blue and red storefront on Main Street in Centralia near Napa Auto Parts that struck her as the perfect spot for a bakery, so she signed a lease.
“I did not have a business plan,” she said. “I didn’t have a plan of action. I just knew that the end goal was to have a bakery.”
They drilled holes in the floor for a grease trap. They painted everything. They turned the 600-square-foot building into a bakery and opened the doors to Sweet Dough Cookie Co. in early February 2022. She decided to teach classes on Fridays and open to the public for cookie sales only on Saturdays.
And every Saturday, she sold 2,000 cookies, closing when she ran out of sweet treats.
Then, in February 2024, the Klumpers of K&K Adventures approached her about moving into a larger space they owned at 734 Market Blvd. in Chehalis next to Benny’s Florist. She moved in after they remodeled the 3,000-square-foot building. Her father and husband installed new flooring, painted the inside walls white, built a wall to separate the kitchen from the customers, and converted the building into a bakery. They opened the new store May 11, 2024.
Now she sells 4,000 cookies every Saturday.
“I like to explain to people that just because my doors are open to the public one day a week, it doesn’t mean that I’m not in there Monday through Sunday,” Shirer said.
She and an employee work all week preparing and scooping dough, making all the toppings — caramel sauce, raspberry preserves, lemon curd and others — and baking in two ovens all day Friday and packaging cookies for sale on Saturdays.
“I think the most amount of hours I’ve spent baking was 16 hours straight, and just for one Saturday,” she said.
She offers pre-orders through her website, https://sweetdoughcookieco.com/, on Thursday for people who want to skip the line.
Her biggest challenge, she said, is being a people pleaser. She wants to make everyone happy, which isn’t always going to happen in business. But she’s developing a thicker skin for criticism.
She also said the cost of ingredients in recent months has skyrocketed.
“I was paying $14 for 60-count eggs, and then yesterday, I paid almost $23, so it has almost doubled in price, same with butter,” she wrote in a Facebook post last week. “If you’ve been to the grocery store, you know that butter has gone up — flour, sugar, brown sugar, everything that I need to make cookies has gone up.”
Although her prices remain the same, she said, “I am spending triple the price for ingredients now!”
She rotates her offerings every week and recently started making scones.
Despite the challenges, she said, “It’s a miracle that I can only be open one day a week and survive, but I’m just going to ride the wave until the wave stops, and until then, it’s been such a joy to do this.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
