My name is Marta Torres (The Cookie Lab – Bolachas Decoradas Artesanais), I’m originally from Lisbon, Portugal, having lived around 20 years abroad (Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan and Spain).
Having started out my professional career in banking- a completely different world from cookie dough and piping bags-, cookies came accidentally into my life 5 years ago. I’m a self taught Cookie Artist and, it was only after having entered an on-line Cookie Contest and winning First Prize (Julia Usher’s Cookie Connection site), I started to look at cookies differently.
Teaching is my passion, and after this winning, I started to get invitations to teach my cookie decorating tech-niques all over the world. USA, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Lithuania, Spain, Dubai, Bahrain, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Egypt, Iran, Australia, Serbia, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay and Portugal were my next stops for my “Master Classes”.
My work has been featured in magazines, for instance American Cake Design, blogs, on-line sites as CakesDecor and Cake Central, even national television. A Portuguese Cake Decoration magazine – “Bolos Decorados” created a Special Edition on just my work.
I’ve been receiving some awards and recently I was;
– WINNER of the prestigious 2016 EAG AWARDS for the “Most Inspiring Royal icing Artist” Category, recently held in Hong Kong (Dec 2016);
– Triple Finalist on Collaboration Category for the Cake Master Awards 2018, 2017 and double on 2016, for my participation on Finalist Collaborations
– FINALIST to the prestigious “Cake Master Magazine Awards, 2015” (AKA Oscars) on Cookies category.
– Finalist of The Cookier of the Year 2014 from the site Cookie Connection.
I’ve been participating as well, in several International group Collaborations and I’m currently involved in 5 other similar projects.
Lately I was invited as;
– “Jury Member” at the Portuguese “Cake Fest” – Exponor;
– “Jury Member” and invited at the “2016 International Cake Show” (Istanbul, Turkey);
– “Guest Star and Jury Member of the 2016 Cake Festival” in Milan, Italy
– “Jury Member” of the IBE – International Bakery Exhibition in Hong Kong, China 2016
– Invited teacher at Orlando Cake Show, USA 2017
– Invited teacher at ACADA Cake Show, Brisbane Australia 2018
– Invited Judge at Cake International, Birmingham 2018