Best Online Cookie Decorating Classes

One of the most popular cookie decorating classes, McGoo U adds multiple new videos each month and has an active group of cookie decorators, meaning you aren’t just taking a class, you’re joining a community. 

In the beginning, Arty McGoo was the title of Elizabeth Adams' art blog, which she began in 2010 to chronicle her myriad creative projects. When cookies became Adams' preferred medium of artistic expression, the blog struck its niche, and Arty became the moniker of her cookie alter ego. Her hand-painting skills, in particular, proved so impressive that bakers around the world began to ask Adams to share her knowledge. In 2013, McGoo U was born.

McGoo U earns the best overall title for the depth, breadth, and regularity of its high-quality cookie content. You will encounter all the primary decorating techniques, including airbrushing, hand-painting, piping, stenciling, stamping, wet-on-wet decoration, dimensional flood, and much more.

Adams produces about six videos per month on McGoo U: a cookie class, two guest segments featuring a prominent artist, a segment on the business of baking, a time-lapse of Adams improvising a design, and a fun, goofy segment called "after school" composed of sketches on subjects like cookie poetry and cookie ASMR.

McGoo U has two tiers of membership: monthly and annually. A monthly membership costs about $10 per month and gets you access to the current month's content. The annual membership costs roughly $105 per year and includes access to ALL McGoo U content, plus occasional giveaways and bonus videos. Both membership tiers include access to the McGoo U social network and private Facebook group.

With a range of classes and different sessions, Craftsy offers different levels of cookie decorating classes to help you grow your skills for a reasonable monthly or annual fee. 

Craftsy started out as Craftsy, then became Bluprint for a couple of years, and is now back to being Craftsy again. Though the name has flip-flopped, the concept hasn't changed. Craftsy remains an online platform hosting high-quality educational content for creatives and aims to "make people's lives better through creativity."

Craftsy is currently home to a very nice assortment of cookie decorating classes, hosted by several different instructors. Courses include Better Basics for Exceptional Cookies; Smart Cookies: Better Faster and More Efficient Decorating; Cookie Pop Presentations: Bouquets and More; 21 Techniques for Playful Cookies; Creative Techniques for Endless Cookies; and Piping Cookies that Pop. Instructors include well-known cookiers like Amber Spiegel, Stephanie Kappel, Anne Yorks, and Georgeanne Bell.

Classes are available on an a la carte basis, but the real bang for the buck is in the membership subscription. Monthly and yearly subscriptions are available at about $8 per month and roughly $80 per year, respectively. With each class lesson lasting around two hours, Craftsy offers a lot of cookie content for the money.

If you’re looking to learn how to make traditional Hungarian and Eastern European-style decorated cookies, The Gingerbread Artist is an excellent, reasonably priced online class for you.

Tunde Dugantsi is a Hungarian gingerbread artist and cookie decorating instructor out of Bowling Green, Kentucky, whose beautiful, intricate, and elegant designs are drawn from the folk art traditions of her native country.

Dugantsi is considered a true artist by many of her students, who study with her as though apprenticing to a revered master. As one student puts it, "Ms. Dugantsi is very clear and precise in her teachings. I really love these classes, and I am very happy I found her, and that she keeps them very affordable. Ms. Dugantsi is a true artist, and I really appreciate that she is willing to share her knowledge."

There are many ways to learn from Dugantsi. She oversees a private Facebook group called Club Cookie Academy, where she hosts two classes monthly at the cost of around $10 per month. Dugantsi has also produced several pre-recorded courses and numerous standalone project tutorials available through Vimeo on-demand.

The Cookie Academy Basics course, for example, is comprised of seven lessons, available individually for about $5 or roughly $30 for the entire course. The shorter cookie project tutorials cost around $10 each. If you seek to learn one-on-one from the master herself, Dugantsi teaches private online classes through Zoom, starting at approximately $200 for a three- to four-hour session.

Edible Impressions is a virtual cookie class ideally suited for group events like birthday parties or team-building exercises, complete with delivered kits that provide everything you need to get decorating.

If you are looking for a custom-designed cookie decorating class to incorporate into an event, such as a birthday party, bridal shower, or team-building exercise, then Edible Impressions is a good choice.

Founder Annette Conrad is a veteran event planner, self-taught baker, and full-time cookier. She specializes in creating custom cookies and has produced virtual courses for several large companies.

Conrad and her team consult with you to create a custom design, which they use to produce decorating kits catered to you, and then they ship the kits to each participant in advance of your event. The kits contain everything needed to create your custom cookies, including sugar cookies and piping bags with colored icings, brushes, and sprinkles. On the day of the course, Conrad herself provides instruction while you and your guests follow along.

Edible Impressions' virtual cookie decorating classes cost about $85 per hour of instruction, plus the custom kits' cost, which starts at roughly $24 per kit, plus shipping and handling.

Get expert tips on everything from decorating the perfect cookie to building a food brand with classes from Julia Usher, an award-winning cookie decorator and an experienced businesswoman in the food industry. 

Julia M. Usher is an award-winning author, stylist, and pastry chef with a long list of accomplishments in the world of sugar arts. Her work has been featured in Bon Appetit, "Vera Wang on Weddings," and Better Homes and Gardens, and she regularly judges cookie competitions, in addition to leading workshops and seminars all over the world.

Usher frequently showcases her astounding skills in exquisitely detailed how-to videos on her popular YouTube channel. Her specialty is 3D cookies: edible cookie sculptures that take the form of jewel boxes, teacups, castles, lizards, and even BBQ grills.

Now, thanks to a new video call platform called Superpeer, you can make her special cookies with Usher herself in a one-on-one setting. Whether there's a specific technique you'd like help mastering or a tricky cookie problem you can't quite solve, Usher can help. A 30-minute consult costs about $50, and a 60-minute in-depth session is roughly $100.

With a mix of live videos and recorded videos for re-watching whenever you need, Arlos Cookies is a great way to interact and ask questions in real time while still learning advanced cookie decorating techniques.

In 2019 while planning for her son Arlo's first birthday, Luna Ellis was struck by a photograph of decorated sugar cookies. She tried her hand at the craft and immediately fell in love. Drawing on her art, design, and marketing background, Ellis founded Arlos Cookies the same year.

Though relatively new to the cookie scene, Arlos is making a substantial impact. The company has accumulated almost 50,000 Instagram followers and is sure to gain more and more as time goes by. One look at the cookies, and you will see why. The clean, detail-oriented designs, thoughtful color palettes, and unique themes like succulents, fruit, and a Christmas tree-bearing camper van announce the presence of a visionary cookie artist.

Arlos Cookies' live classes are conducted in a private Facebook group. Each includes a digital workbook with a supply list, templates, step-by-step guides, color mixing formulas, recipes, and more. You can download the workbook in advance to get prepared.

If something comes up and you miss the class, or if you want to rewatch again later, all the video content is saved. Most classes cost around $30 each.

Julia Day, the woman behind Miss Biscuit, teaches students the basics of cookie decorating and advanced techniques alike with her warm and approachable personality.

Originally a speech pathologist, Julia Day started Miss Biscuit in 2012 out of her home kitchen, fulfilling custom orders and selling her decorated cakes and cookies to local markets.

Simultaneously, her approachable warmth and effervescent personality began to win her a substantial following on social media. Day soon realized that more people wanted to interact with and learn from her than merely purchase her products. And so, Miss Biscuit pivoted to exclusively offering cookie decorating instruction and supplies. Today, Day has two teaching studios—one in Melbourne and another in Sydney—and has taught workshops as far afield as London, New York City, and Dubai.

Luckily for everyone outside of Australia, Miss Biscuit has developed an online classroom and community on her website. To access all the content, you must take one of the beginners' classes, which cost around $99. Each of these courses provides almost two hours of high-quality cookie instruction, access to the private Miss Biscuit Facebook group, downloadable resources such as technical tips and recipes, and, of course, Day's delightful presence and charming Australian accent.