Panora baker turns cookies into edible works of art
Amity Halling combines baking talent, artistic creativity and food-printing technology to craft custom cookies that look almost too good to eat — but taste just as good as they look.
By Rich Wicks | Panora Times, July 2026
Amity Halling is a cookie artist.
Amity Halling of Panora has discovered an art form that customers simply eat up. Using a mixture of cooking skill, creativity and technology, she creates cookies that are both pleasing to the eye and to the taste buds.
Halling explained the twisting road that led to her kitchen in Panora.
“My husband’s family is from the Perry area. I did middle school through high school in Perry, and then, later in life, we reconnected and got married. He was in the Navy, so we moved all over. We have two boys, and the goal was always to come back to Iowa. So, a year before he retired, in 2019, we came back and landed in Panora.”
Amity and her husband, Bill, have two sons, Miles and Mason.
Halling described how her business began and how it suddenly changed course.
“Before we moved back here, when we were in California, I started a business called Amity’s Attic. I redid furniture and repurposed things. Then, when we moved here, I figured I would continue that. But that winter, it was too cold to be in the garage, so I made some decorated cookies and posted them. Within a few months, I was booked up, totally by accident. And here we are, seven years later, still doing it. Even through COVID, I’ve stayed pretty consistently busy.”
Amity’s Attic Sweets is making a name for itself.
With her business unexpectedly shifting toward more cookies than furniture, Halling recalled a moment in her first year of making cookies when she discussed with her husband whether to pursue it as “a real thing.”
“He said to me, ‘You’re already booked three months in advance. It’s already a real thing if that’s what you want,’ ” she said. “So, I started a business page off the original Facebook page of Amity’s Attic, called Amity’s Attic Sweets.”
Ever since then, Halling says she has been busily and happily filling customer orders. Halling noted that she has a few customers who have had birthday cookies made for their kids for so many years now, it has become a tradition.
The cookies Halling creates fall into two general categories: decorated and bakery style.
“I mostly do decorated cookies, like rolled, cutout and decorated. But I also do what I call bakery style, which is more of a normal cookie but all different flavors,” she said.
Amity Halling’s bakery-style cookies are available in many flavors.
Halling noted that the decorated cookies are not mass produced and include much time and attention to their design.
“It’s not for everybody. Because of the time involved, it can get kind of expensive. They’re fancy enough; they kind of become part of the decoration of the party,” Halling said.
But even the highly decorated cookies are still made for eating.
“They are a cookie after all, so they also need to taste good,” she said.
As proven by the dozens of photos on the Facebook page of Amity’s Attic Sweets, Halling is able to create decorated cookies for most any type of event or occasion.
“I have done a lot of different stuff, but I would say it’s primarily birthdays — of all ages. I also do weddings, baby showers, bridal showers, any type of special event,” she said. “I’ve made a few explicit things, like for bridal showers. So, I do get those orders sometimes.”
Asked about her most popular item, Halling had a clear answer.
Cookie decorating becomes an art in Amity Halling’s kitchen.
“My vanilla sugar decorated is definitely the go-to. I do make other flavors of decorated, but that’s the top one, especially in a party setting because everybody likes vanilla,” Halling said.
To help create detailed designs on her cookies, Halling has found a high-tech way to simplify her work.
“It’s like a laser printer, but it uses food color, which is cool because I can do logos or characters and other things that are intricate, which cuts down on the cost to the customer,” she said.
The “bakery style” cookies that Halling creates are simply for eating, and they come in a variety of flavors. A few of the more popular bakery cookie flavors made by Halling include smores, cordial chocolate cherry, peanut butter with chocolate drizzle, and blueberry lemon.
Halling says when baking, it is essential to use the correct ingredients in the correct amounts. Any variations can be disastrous, as Halling found out one Easter. She is able to laugh about it now.
“I get all of my supplies in bulk from Hometown Foods, and probably three years in, at Easter time, all of the family was coming here, and I had one order that I needed to bake that morning,” she said. “But I kept having to throw cookies away. I put leavening in, but you don’t want to put too much in because you want them to stay in their shape and not poof too much. But everything just kept poofing. I was almost in tears, and Easter was almost canceled.”
Cookies can celebrate most any occasion, as these patriotic ones show.
Eventually, Halling discovered that she was inadvertently using the wrong type of flour.
“The company had changed the color of the label. There was a burgundy red and a bright red, and nobody noticed because it was so similar. I think I went through almost a whole pallet of flour before I figured it out,” she said. “That was kind of a doozy.”
With word-of-mouth continuing to bring in more orders, Halling stays as busy as she cares to be — and possibly more.
“I used to think I had a busy season, but I pretty much stay busy all the time now,” she said. “During the holidays, I’ll get orders for bigger events. Unfortunately, I do have to turn away some orders. I recently heard there’s another person doing cookies, which is great. Probably the thing I need to do better on is the work-life balance. It’s tricky when you’re doing something you enjoy and working from home.”
