Nashville baker makes beautiful cookies of Taylor Swift in her NFL era ahead of Super Bowl
Emily Henegar is a frosting virtuoso known for her delectable creations that belong in museums. She delineates memories on sugar cookies for all occasions, and she's made her mark by designing cookies for the stars: Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Ariana Grande, John Mayer, Travis Scott, The Lumineers and Maggie Rogers. Her latest jaw-dropping batch featured Taylor Swift in her “NFL era.”
Henegar, who lives in Nashville, frosted cookies in red-and-gold. Six rectangular sweets replicated Swift's Chiefs outfits: the custom jacket designed by NFL wife Kristin Juszczyk, the red-and-black sweatshirt she bought from small business Westside Storey and the custom white sweatshirt designed by Kilo Kish for GANT.
Another morsel is a cutout of Travis Kelce's gloves shaped in a heart, a symbol he made when he scored a touchdown during a game against the Bills. Swift often makes the gesture during the "Fearless" set of the Eras Tour.
Henegar also made a replica of the beanie Swift wore to a game made by Kansas City small business Kut the Knit. And then there's a rectangle with the line Swift famously sang to Kelce in Buenos Aires, Argentina: "Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me."
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That’s how the cookie crumbles
Before making the NFL-themed batch, the baker explained how she got a 25 custom treats hand delivered to Taylor Swift in May. All three assortments made it backstage at the Eras Tour.
“I cannot let Taylor Swift be in Nashville and not make her cookies,” the 24-year-old business owner said. “Like every great Taylor Swift story, it goes way back.”
Henegar began her business, Cookie in the Kitchen, 13 years ago when she was 11 years old. She combined her love of graphic design, business, music and baking into a winning recipe.
The chef sells sweets for birthdays, graduations, baby showers, wedding showers and corporate events. Her specialty is crafting sugary, custom-made memories for bands and artists.
“My tagline is making celebrities feel like people and people feel like celebrities,” she said. Her first big break happened senior year in Atlanta. Henegar took album covers, fan art and popular moments of Dua Lipa’s career and frosted them onto cookies.
“I made some cookies for her and passed them off to her security guard thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen,’” she said, “and then I’m driving away from the venue when my mom calls me.”
Dua Lipa had posted a photo of the cookies and a series of videos with people coming up to try each one.
“My mom said, ‘I think you’re on to something,’” she said.
In her pop star cookie era
So when Swift announced she was performing at Nissan Stadium for three nights, Henegar got to work making three sets of designs, one for each night.
For night one, she made a replica of Swift’s “Lover House,” a symbolic house where every room represents a different album. For night two, she frosted outfits Swift wore during her three-and-a-half-hour performance. And for night three, she had 25 cookies of inside jokes and memories from the “Anti-Hero” music video guests to the "ME!" mural Kelsey Montague painted to Swift's three cats Olivia, Meredith and Benjamin Button.
“[My contact at Nissan] told me they brought the ‘Lover House’ just generally backstage,” Henegar said. “And then the second night, they brought those to Taylor’s team, and then the third night, they brought the personalized set to her team, and then her team was like, ‘OK, we’re taking these to Taylor now.’”
Follow Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network's Taylor Swift reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.