Before Penny Stankiewicz ever picked up a pastry bag, she was in a documentary film edit suite, building stories frame by frame. That background traveled with her into the pastry kitchen and became her superpower: the deep research, the hunt for the perfect visual language, the relentless commitment to a single cohesive narrative.

A graduate of both NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and the Institute of Culinary Education, Penny occupies a rare creative space: one part fine artist, one part culinary professional, all storyteller. The combination has made her one of New York's most distinctive and in-demand pastry artists, and the driving creative force behind Sugar Couture since its founding.

Her culinary career began with a pivotal detour. While producing Absolute Wilson, a critically acclaimed feature documentary on avant-garde theater visionary Robert Wilson, she enrolled in ICE's Pastry and Baking Arts program on a creative whim. The whim stuck. She graduated, took a position in the pastry department at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market under acclaimed Chef Pichet Ong, and realized that everything she loved about filmmaking applied with breathtaking directness to sugar: the drive to make something that moves people, the hunger to get it exactly right, the belief that every detail is load-bearing.

Sugar Couture was born, and high-profile clients followed quickly. She approaches every commission, from a 500-guest corporate gala centerpiece to an intimate birthday cake, with the same methodology: become a miniature expert on the subject, immerse in the details, then execute something that feels genuinely impossible. Every piece is original, designed around each client's brief and built to a technical standard that holds at scale.

Penny is a recurring featured chef on Epicurious's 4 Levels YouTube series and has appeared on Food Network's Ridiculous Cakes, where she produced some of the largest and most technically demanding cakes of her career. She has taught at the Institute of Culinary Education, the 92nd Street Y, Sarah Lawrence College, the International Culinary Institute, and De Gustibus Cooking School at Macy's Herald Square.

Her entrepreneurial achievements have been recognized by the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses/Tory Burch Initiative, and in 2020 she was inducted into Les Dames d'Escoffier, one of the most prestigious women's culinary organizations in the world. Sugar Couture is a woman-owned independent studio built on craft, originality, and a point of view that has never wavered.

Her favorite project is the one she hasn't made yet.

Penny's work has been featured in New York Magazine, Vogue, New York Times, on Food Network, Epicurious, Heritage Radio Network, and across national and international media.