The first annual LA Cookie Con & Sweets Show was held at the Pasadena Convention Center on January 25, 2015. The sold out show was the West Coast’s first baking and pastry convention. LA Cookie Con featured an exhibitor hall with about 75 exhibitors, World Dessert Table competition judged by Ron Ben-Israel, meet and greet sessions with pastry and TV celebrities, talks, demonstrations, gluten free/raw/vegan area, a kid’s area, VIP lounge, and plenty of sweets. General admission was $21 for adults.
Most of the exhibitors were from SoCal and they brought samples of cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, cake pops, granola, toffee, donuts, truffles, macarons, pop tart style pastries, Danish kringles, nuts, beef jerky, and more. Since there was no cooking area for exhibitors, the demonstrations mostly involved decorating. They also had non-food exhibitors selling candles, lip balm, jewelry, plush toys, baking supplies, cookie cutters, etc. Cute event t-shirts made at the show were $7.
Many of the attendees wore sweets inspired shirts and carried sweets inspired accessories. It seemed to attract many bakers, including those with their own shops. Drive Me Cookie offered made to
order ice cream cookie sandwiches.
Cookies and Froyo
While we didn’t see any froyo exhibitors, cookies are related to frozen yogurt in many ways. Cookies have inspired frozen yogurt flavors. Cookies appear in frozen yogurt mixes. Cookies are found on almost every froyo toppings bar. And cookies are used to make froyo cookie sandwiches.
Our favorite fresh baked chocolate chip cookie? DeLuscious – which features a thin style cookie chock full of two kinds of chocolate chips with crispy edges.
Favorite cookie made out of frozen dough: Jen & Joe’s cookies were moist and chewy.
Froyo Relevant Vendors
Amoretti artisan natural flavors are used to make gourmet frozen yogurt, ice cream, sorbet and gelato. The Artisan flavors are naturally flavored, naturally colored and preservative free.
Organic Pastures raw dairy products include raw milk, kefir, cheese and butter. The products are organic and made with milk from pasture grazed cows. Raw milk has more probiotics than pasteurized milk. Raw milk frozen yogurt, anyone?
Trends
One thing we noticed is that after years of large portions, desserts are getting much smaller. One bakery, Cupcake Kissis, had cupcakes the size of quarters and Les Beaux Chocolates had teeny truffles.
