LAKE CARROLL — Sometimes, creativity is simply a matter of inspiration.

Sometimes, it takes a little coaching.

For a Lake Carroll resident and her Forreston friend, it’s a little bit of both.

Laura Miller of Lake Carroll, and Julie Schroeder-Ranz of Forreston, have used their creative and culinary expertise to cook up a business, Coaches Cookies, to make their own place in the cookie world.

The cookiers, who taught and coached sports together at Sterling Public Schools for nearly 20 years, whip up recipes in their kitchens to create cookies with tastes that delight and colorful frosting with a silky smooth sheen that shines.

Baking cookies has given the two a creative outlet to explore, and they’ve made plenty of friends, customers — and even some “fun money,” they said, from their business. For Miller, it’s given her an opportunity to re-explore some of the creative baking she once did as a child and in 4-H programs.

“I like the challenge,” Miller said. “I’ve been very crafty my whole life. I like the challenge when people come up with things, figuring out how we are going to make this happen, and to make it work when it’s something we haven’t done.”

Custom orders make up a large part of their business, and they’ve been up to pretty much any creative task they’ve been asked, Miller said. Both make their cookies at home.

The pair’s cookie connection began when Schroeder-Ranz made some for a friend’s ugly sweater Christmas party, and it became like a gift that kept on giving. The cookies were a hit, and that got Schroeder-Ranz thinking about turning cookies into cash. She shared her idea with Miller, but it wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic caused shutdowns in spring 2020 — and their coaching commitments to dwindle — that they started giving serious thought to building a business.

“We were teaching PE together at the time, and I was watching a Christmas cookie show on The Food Network,” Schroeder-Ranz said. “I always wanted to be a cake decorator, but had zero art ability. I started watching videos and hooked up with this one person on Facebook who had a $40 class. Because I was bored and wasn’t coaching basketball, I just started playing with it.”

Like perfecting a 3-point basketball shot or slamming a volleyball kill in the right zone, it took time and practice to get the cookies looking the way they wanted. They knew they were getting better when Laura’s husband, Scott, noticed he wasn’t getting as many tastes of their trial and errors.

“We had a lot of mistake cookies when we first started,” Miller said. “About a year after we were in business, my husband would tell me, ‘I never get a cookie anymore.’”

Each of the cookie’s decorations involves a careful process of layering, outlining and detailing to create crisp, colorful designs, using a variety of kitchen tools and a bit of technology. Stencils are made with a Cricut machine, and Miller has a 3D printer that she’s used to make more than 1,000 different cookie cutters. For more colorful cookies, frosting is applied in layers, one at a time.

To give the cookies their flavor, emulsions are used instead of extracts that some cookie makers use. Emulsions, Schroeder-Ranz said, “bake out because they’re water-based. Extracts don’t bake out, so the flavor is much stronger with an emulsion than using an extract.”

An assortment of flavors and mix-ins are available, with chocolate chip M&M and vanilla almond being best sellers, Miller said. Some flavors are seasonal, such as a fall favorite with graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate chips mixed in.

New ideas come up all of the time, and much of the inspiration comes from online workshops and groups they frequent.

“Online and on Facebook there are tons of cookie groups,” Miller said. “Between the two of us, we’ve joined live cookie groups. That’s where you get a lot of ideas, and you learn from each other in those groups because a lot of people ask questions. People in the cookie world are really willing to share because there’s always a demand and no one is really competing with each other.”

Cookies come individually wrapped and labeled with ingredients and the date made. They have made their way to all sort of parties, including baby showers and weddings. Holidays and graduation season are busy times.

So far, Miller said, there hasn’t been an idea from a customer that has stumped them.

“We get a lot of people who have grandchildren, and they call and say they want ‘this’ theme,” Miller said. “We might have never heard of that, but we’ll figure it out. We’ll Google. We’ll find the characters and see what we can do.”

One of their more interesting challenges came in 2023, when a family wanted water tower-themed cookies for their child.

“We had a four-year-old from Milledgeville who was having a water tower birthday party — he loved water towers,” Miller said. “I thought, ‘How am I going to do a water tower and make it look good?’ I got online and looked at pictures of the water towers at different places, because they’re all a little bit different. I tried to mimic those and found other pretty cool looking water towers, and they turned out pretty cool.”

In addition to selling their cookies, the pair also holds occasional cookie decorating classes in Lake Carroll and Sterling. The most recent one in Lake Carroll was Feb. 24 at the Clubhouse, where attendees decorated pre-made cookies in a snowflake theme. Classes in Sterling are at the Sterling Schools Foundation’s Alumni Center. More classes are planned later this year.

The two met in 2004 while teaching and coaching in Sterling. Miller taught for 30 years before retiring in 2021, but occasionally substitutes in Sterling; and Schroeder-Ranz is still teaching, having recently wrapped up her 33rd year. Both have coached a variety of sports in Sterling and around the area through the years.

The Millers moved to Lake Carroll in 2024 from Sterling after Scott retired from his job. They’re getting to know their new community well, and much of that has to do with the business’s presence at the Lake Carroll Farmers Market during the summer. They are at the market on select weeks, and also make Livengood Barn’s Backroads Sale in Chadwick, and Sterling’s Sights and Sounds Christmas Walk part of their annual vendor appearances.

“I’m meeting people up here who come to the market,” Miller said. “We’ve done fairly well there and have gotten some orders from it, and I’ve got to meet some of our neighbors. I joined the Women’s Club here, and they were like, ‘You’re the cookie lady at the market!’ That also gets the word out a bit.”

Schroeder-Ranz said she also enjoys what the part-time business has done for her socially, including getting to know people in Lake Carroll.

“A lot of the fun is to watch what we create,” she said. “Our friendship has grown, and just the fun to go out with other people and have them like our product, that’s fun, too.”

Find Coaches Cookies on Facebook to learn more about the business. Email coachescookies.yummy@gmail.com or message it on Facebook for ordering information.