One of the reasons Amy Ilse became attached to the new spot for her bakery, Amy’s Cookie Co., is the black and white awning attached over the door.
“Fun fact: I’ve always wanted one, as silly as that sounds.
When I was growing up I imagined a black and white awning,” Amy said. “On every building I looked into it hard, and it wasn’t possible at any of my other bakeries.
But I finally got it!”
Amy and her husband, Keenan, began their venture and opened her first bakery in El Campo in 2021, and from year to year they grew their family and their business. In 2022 Amy’s Cookie Co. bought their food trailer, and the following year their son, Beckham, was born. In 2024 they opened another bakery in Bay City, and they hope to open Edna’s spot maybe by this Thanksgiving (fingers crossed). Plus, they’re planning to open another bakery in Sugarland in 2026.
“Edna wasn’t planned at all, but when we saw it we had to do it. Honestly, we wanted to hate it,” Amy admitted, laughing. “But the building was so move-in ready. We walked in and it just felt like home, as cheesy as that sounds.”
Keenan agreed, calling it a dream. “It was something we never expected to work out the way it did. When we saw it, it was perfect, we went inside and it was perfect, so we realized we might have to pull the trigger. Plus, Edna has been so good to us.”
Amy’s been baking for nearly 15 years, and she began selling baked goods for friends and family in high school.
She continued as a cottage baker out of her home and once word-ofmouth traveled, she ending up baking more cookies than she ever thought. Amy baked so much, she would bake all night.
“It got to the point I was baking so much I wasn’t sleeping,” she said. “But I knew I needed to have some long nights to build up my clientele so I could do it full-time on my own.”
“I have to brag on her when she tells this story,” Keenan interjected. “Because she underplays it so much. She did the whole nine to five, get off work and baked until 2 a.m. Then she’d wake up at 6 a.m. to work out before work, and repeat the cycle throughout the week. I would run her energy drinks while we were dating. And I did a lot of dishes.”
When the couple married and moved in together, the idea of a storefront came into play. Keenan joked that he couldn’t take it anymore, due to working long hours as a firefighter. He’d arrive from a two-day shift at eight in the morning and he would find icing smeared on the counters, the kitchen filled with a powdered sugar storm, and hundreds of cookies sitting around, everywhere. “So the business outgrew the house, which was a great thing, but a scary thing,” Amy said. “Since then, all of the other projects we took on felt super nervous, but for some reason this one in Edna has been nothing but exciting.”
And if you’re wondering, dear reader, if Amy does all the baking for her stores, the answer is no. Her bakeries offer cookies, cakes, cheesecakes, cupcakes, and bars. The stores rotate their menus every week in order to keep their customers on their toes and challenge the staff. Amy and Keenan both agreed their staff is an amazing team, who without them nothing would be possible.
Not only that, they feel the same way about their clientele. “We’ve been blessed with the best customers and supporters we could ask for,” Keenan said “We’d like to say thank you to them, they really are outstanding.”
“We’re surprised when we realize people will spend their whole lunch hour driving over and getting some cookies,” Amy said.
One can find the bakery’s staples, or nonnegotiable items, at any bakery every day: chocolate chip cookies, toffee chocolate chunk sea salt cookies and carmelitas. “They’ve become so popular, we have people riot when we take them off the menu,” Amy said.
Amy’s favorite is the toffee chocolate chunk sea salt cookie, which she says is out of this world with its salty, sweet deliciousness. She said it’s been on the menu since they opened, and it’s one that when you start eating it, you can’t stop.
Keenan agreed the toffee chocolate chunk sea salt is one of his favorites, but he enjoys the sandwich version of it even more, because of the caramel buttercream between the cookies.
“Not to mention, our carmelita, an oatmeal cookie bar on the bottom, with a chocolate and a caramel layer in the middle, and an oatmeal cookie bar on top…it’s a perfect blend of everything.”
Amy’s Cookie Co. and Bakery will be nestled between Twin Rivers Real Estate and the historic Edna Theatre, on Ed Linn Street.
