The stubble in Travis Kelce’s immaculate five o’clock shadow was tough to perfect given the slight tilt of his head — not to mention the creases and folds around his crinkled eyes.
And the shadow on his jersey, cast by the “Fearless” heart hand symbol he threw up post-touchdown, had to fall just right. Not impossible for a seasoned artist, but not easy.
Moreover, as a Taylor Swift fan going all the way back to her self-titled album, Justina Rucinski had to get the luminescence of the singer’s blue-beaded dress and fluffy purple jacket down pat.
That was the outfit Swift had worn when she changed the lyrics to her song “Karma” to be about Travis Kelce, so those tassels simply needed to shine.
More:Nashville baker makes beautiful cookies of Taylor Swift in her NFL era ahead of Super Bowl
For most artists, creating depth and layers based on where light hits a subject is foundational, says Rucinski. And professionals know that a person’s unique characteristics are held in the tiniest details, making faces both incredibly hard and incredibly important.
But what makes Rucinski’s work so jaw-droppingly unique is that her canvas is a cookie.
Yes, a cookie. Like grandma used to make — but if grandma was also Michelangelo.
Her paint is hand-mixed edible gel. And for texture differences, she has artisan icing recipes she can make thicker or thinner as needed.
Her work? These portraits that take hours and hours to complete? They’re meant to be eaten. Reduced to crumbs.
But the images are so spectacular, the features so minuscule, that consuming these pastries seems the confectionary equivalent of throwing acid on the Mona Lisa. (More on that in a bit.)
A native Iowan and cookie decorator extraordinaire, Rucinski recently went viral with a set of cookies themed around American darlings Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. Her cookie depicting Jason Kelce’s now infamous bare-chested cheer for his brother has been particularly popular, she says.
The virality has been especially meaningful for the artist whose journey to cookie fame was marked by a violent sexual assault perpetrated by a man pretending to be a customer. Throughout her recovery — and her activism afterwards — Rucinski always grabbed for two umbrellas against the storm of trauma: cookies and Taylor Swift’s music.
Now, nearly five years past the night that almost stole her joy forever, she’s using those same two hobbies to celebrate a new phase of recovery — and a very Swiftie Super Bowl.
From ‘hot mess express’ to a passion ignited: How a cookie decorator found a calling
Most of the happiest moments of Rucinski's life have involved having her hands in dough. Kneading it. Rolling it. Watching it rise in the oven. Delighting in her family's yummmmmsss.
About a decade ago, Rucinski got a wild hair to bake and decorate a two-tiered cake like a bag from Victoria's Secret for her sister’s 16th birthday. The urge came out of nowhere, she previously told the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network, because, frankly, she wouldn’t have considered herself an artist at the time.
"I couldn't even draw a stick figure," she said, shrugging. She had no tools, and it took hours, but a passion ignited.
"I feel like I found what I was supposed to do," she said in a 2019 Register profile. "It put a fire in me that I've never experienced."
More:'I was in hell': After a stranger violently raped a home baker, she's dedicating her life to making sure no other woman feels that pain
She'd daydream of designs, drawing images in her mind and sketching on dough. She made cakes for close friends, charging them cost. But friends told colleagues, who told others, and people kept ordering. Her business, Sweetems Co., was born.
The first time she tried a custom cookie order, they were a complete failure. “Hot mess express,” she says. She went back to cakes, but she was drawn to the highly intricate work she saw from other cookie decorators.
When she got a request for "Toy Story" cookies a few years later, she decided to try again.
“I'm the type of person, I don't give up. I don't let things defeat me,” Rucinski says. “So I took the order and I actually didn’t hate doing them.”
She especially liked that the dozen required per order meant she got to try lots of different designs — more than the limited number that she could etch onto a single cake.
In fact, after years of honing her artistic eye, decorating cookies set her detail-oriented heart ablaze.
Cookies became her career — and she pushed herself to design with more and more intricacy.
'Watching a love story unfold': All the details of her viral 'Traylor' cookies
Some of Rucinski’s most complex and popular cookies feature recreated scenes from movies or moments from pop culture.
So with Valentine’s Day on her mind — a huge season for hand-decorated cookies — and what felt like her entire social media feed focusing on her favorite icon, Taylor Swift, Rucinski decided to push herself to create a “Traylor” in love set.
“I'm sitting at my friend's home with my kids and we’re watching the Chiefs game. The first time they showed her, I was — I think the whole world was — just completely shocked when we saw her cheering him on at that game,” she says. “I was immediately obsessed. It was literally like you're watching a love story unfold.”
A "full Swiftie nerd" since she saw Taylor open for Brad Paisley in 2007, Rucinski knew the super-fan details of Swift's life and loves that could set her cookies apart.
So she crafted a friendship bracelet-themed cookie because Travis said he put his number on a bracelet he'd hoped to give to Taylor at her show in Kansas City last summer.
And Rucinski caught the “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs” moment live because she was watching fans stream TikToks of the show, so she immediately put that scene in the set, paired with his reaction. And she did the same as she was watching the game where he threw up that Fearless heart.
She printed out a photo of Taylor kissing Travis on the cheek — one of their first as a couple posted to social media by a Chiefs’ player’s girlfriend — and worked painstakingly on recreating it.
The whole set took her two full days — she spent over four hours hunched over that one cookie alone.
“It didn't look like her as I was going, so I had to keep pulling back and shadowing and looking at it and shadowing,” she says. “Then Travis, I had to redo him twice. I needed to soften some features.”
“I had to stare at that picture and just make sure I looked at every tiny little detail to try to emulate them as much as I physically possibly could.”
Despite her obvious skill, Rucinski still doesn’t consider herself an artist outside of cookies and cakes. She doesn’t paint on canvas and she hasn’t actually tried to draw on paper in a while.
Sure, she works with color theory and light like any other painter, but the medium difference is key.
“With a cookie, it's a whole different thing,” she says. “It's such a tiny, tiny area. I'm working with maybe four inches. And I have to be very mindful of my pressure when I'm hand painting and of the products I use because there's icing underneath that certain things can eat away at.”
Her hard-learned techniques — which she teaches in online classes — allows her to craft that realism.
After posting her first Taylor Swift set, which she created out of pure passion, Rucinski was flooded with orders. But in the rush of Valentine’s Day, she could only take on one customer — and that commission will take her more than two days to complete and cost more than $300.
“A lot of people seem to think that just because it's edible, it should be cheap. Just because it's a cookie, it should be a certain price,” she says. “I disagree with that because you're getting art. You're getting a realistic portrait and I don't care if it's on a cookie, it is still art.”
“And my art isn't less valued than any other artists who's making it on a canvas.”
Channeling trauma and gaining 'so much wisdom'
Rucinski didn’t know the man who said he was dropping off payment for 200 complicated highly decorated cookies. But she’d come to know he was Steven Andrew Mauck, a serial abuser of women who once hit a partner's head with a hammer.
When Mauck, who never intended to actually buy those cookies, asked Rucinski for a receipt, she showed him in as she wrote one up. Now in her apartment, Mauck held a gun to her head, zip tied her and raped her.
A few months later, Rucinski testified against Mauck, who was convicted of second-degree sexual abuse and sentenced to 25 years. He has since died in prison.
More:A 'he said, she said,' or a violent rape? This is what it is like to testify against your rapist.
Afterwards, her grief and pain fueled a new-found activism. She spoke out and helped change home bakery laws in Iowa to allow purveyors to sell their wares at places other than their homes or official farmers markets — meaning women can now meet customers at public places.
And she healed the way she always had: with dough.
She got her hands into some cookies and started channeling all of her emotions, trauma and joy and love and pain, into her work. That process has helped her become the artist she is today, she says.
“Obviously, no one should have to go through what I went through, but I've gained so much wisdom,” she says. “I feel like I see life in such a different, more valuable way.”
“No matter what, I can't run away from that experience, so I learned to embrace it,” she says. “I've used it for good. I've used it to help people. Laws have been changed. I've used it to make my work better. To make me better. I took such a horrible thing and I turned it into good and I'm so proud of myself for that.”
Oh, and about eating her art. Go ahead!
Rucinski says her work is about creating a memory not necessarily an object. But … after she finishes these Valentine’s Day orders, some of her followers suggested she look into resin, which could act as preservative.
Just in case one of her cookies really is too beautiful to be reduced to crumbs.
Courtney Crowder, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. Reach her atccrowder@dmreg.com.
