Sweet tooth: Central-based cottage baker shares cookie designs for her growing TikTok audience

Young entrepreneur Aleah Azar has been in a sweet business for a while now. Her cookie brand, Sweet Suga Lips, celebrated its five-year anniversary in May.

The 27-year-old sells custom sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, cookie cakes and even fun extras like chocolate pretzel rods from her website, where customers can specify what they have in mind for their cookie orders. The licensed cottage baker loves to use fun, vibrant colors for her royal icing designs. She pipes her designs by hand and also uses a printer and projector to help perfect some of the finer details, like logos and faces.  

Her intricate designs have garnered attention on online platforms like TikTok, where her content about her whole cookie-making process has amassed 30,000 followers. And through making cookies for businesses like Fred’s in Tigerland, she’s served celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal, Dave Portnoy and DJ Xandra.

Sweet Suga Lips is based out of her family’s home in Central and has been operating out of the Capital Region since the start. After all, Azar was studying kinesiology at LSU when she decided to sell self-designed cookies for a little extra cash. She says she had no way of knowing what would happen next. 

“I just woke up one day, and I had a ton of orders,” she says. “It hit me all at once. Like, I’m actually a business now.”

The secret ingredient for her sugar cookies: imitation almond flavoring, she says.

“A little bit of almond will change the whole flavor of it,” Azar adds. 

While her customers give direction and sometimes even inspo boards, Azar usually has complete artistic freedom on the designs. She doesn’t need to send mock-ups; her customers trust her. 

On average, Azar makes and sells around 20-30 dozen cookies a week, with her biggest week maxing out at 47 dozen. She says a lot of her clients come from New Orleans or even out of state, where they saw her on social media and placed an order. 

“Cookies are a full-time job,” she says. “Content is kind of on the side.”

Still, social media continues to bring new opportunities. After posting a clip of her making Waterboy-themed cookies for a contest, the video was chosen as a finalist and won based on interactions, like comments, likes and reposts. She soon found herself on a brand trip to Mexico with the hydration drink mix brand. Who would’ve thought some sugar and flour would send Azar on a trip to Tulum?

Despite the success of Sweet Suga Lips, her plan was never baking. This one-woman show is self-taught, and she says that everything her business is now was built on trial and error. 

“I was really nervous at first,” she says.

Azar finds motivation from her customers, though. She loves to be a part of people’s parties, but she’s also seen some of her clients through their graduation parties, engagement announcements, weddings, baby showers and birthdays for years now. 

“I get to grow up with them through cookies,” she says.

As for her next steps, Azar is thinking about shipping possibilities. Right now, she doesn’t do deliveries, so her customers come to her.

As her business gets bigger, she says she might be outgrowing making cookies in her home kitchen and may want to look into a physical storefront.

She’s been teaching classes at other locations as hired, and she loves the idea of hosting events like girls’ nights at a Sweet Suga Lips storefront.

Until then, customers can find Sweet Suga Lips online on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Or, check out Azar’s website to place orders.