As she filled out her BYU admissions essays, Anya Fazulyanov (’28) shared her dream: to “be on Food Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge.” And in fall 2024, as a first-semester BYU freshman, she did just that, competing against three other professional bakers for the $10,000 prize. “It’s fun to look back and be like, ‘Anya, you did it,’” she says. Anya took the cake (cookie?) with her first-place 10-inch-tall lemon-lavender cookie gazebo.
Anya began making cookies when she was young, reading cookbooks at bedtime and baking with her mom, Christine Carey Fazulyanov (BS’95), who believes in teaching with real tools. “I was not about to buy an Easy Bake Oven,” says Christine. “If we’re going to cook,” she remembers saying, “we have a real oven. Let’s teach you how to use it.”
When she was a teenager, Anya started Anya’s Cookies, a custom cookie business specializing in sugar cookies with elaborate royal icing designs. The business has grown, with orders for big names like Sabrina Carpenter, Tony Hawk, and Studio McGee. “I can 3D print custom cookie cutter shapes,” she says, estimating that she has over 250 cookie cutters. She cuts out other shapes with an X-Acto knife and mixes her own frosting colors.
As a pre–graphic design major, Anya balances the business with school, studying in her dorm on campus and fulfilling cookie orders at her family’s home in Cedar Hills, Utah. Christine, who has watched Anya dabble in photography, sewing, cooking—even designing and mailing out a zine—is eager to see where Anya will go. “She’ll be one to watch,” she says.
