You've probably noticed that I always release my stencil sets about two months before the holidays or seasons when they're most likely to be used. That's so everyone gets plenty of time to play with them before they need to be pressed into serious action! So, for instance...
We've now got about one foot of snow on the ground (which is almost unprecedented for St. Louis) and more is still coming down, so it should probably come as no surprise that I was especially drawn to the spring-y colors and flowers in our cover image by...
With one of the year's biggest cookie holidays barely behind us, it's already time to get the creative juices flowing for the next big one - Valentine's Day! Phew! The work of the cookier is never done...
Thank you all for participating in the first-ever survey of Sugar Dot Surveys! I wanted to find out what (if anything) you use to speed-dry your icing, and how you use those tools and why. You sure did come through. Those who participated range from...
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great holiday and is ready to jump right back into cookies! I took a few days off from decorating cookies myself to...
I have always loved those funny little Nordic gnomes that pop up all over the place - in illustrations, as felt toys, as holiday cookies . . . Normally they're long and tall, with high hats and flowing beards. However, I ship most of my cookies, and try to avoid long thin shapes for fear of breakage. But I can't...
Phew! What an afternoon! I spent the vast majority of it trying to rescue a tiny black kitten that was seeking refuge from the cold under my front porch. No amount of coaxing with...
Years ago, I received two mini hot water bottles from my sister. They had plain knitted covers. One of them was red with a white heart on the front, and the other had the same knitted cover with the colors inverted. (They were too cute together for my sister to buy only one of them!) This memory...
Ooh, what a perfectly divine confluence of events! Here I am in the midst of one of my favorite cookie seasons of the year, writing about my other favorite cookie time - Valentine's Day! Yes, this month, I'm releasing...
Ho, ho, ho! How are everyone's holidays going?! I must say I am busy and joyful. Although, honestly, right now, I am mostly very busy, and waiting for a little downtime for more of the joyful to kick in. Which, brings me to my first point...
I’m back with our second-to-last Close-up with CookieCon 2018 instructors. (I know, it’s hard to believe, but by January, I’ll be moving on to the 2019 instructors!) Here, we’re catching up in more detail with Andrea Walters of Andy Kay’s Cookies, with whom we first chatted back on October 6, here. We learned then that...
I’ve mentioned previously my experiments with stained glass cookies. Cooked sugar was one of the obvious contenders to create the look, but I was hoping to avoid the stark contrast between crunchy, hard sugar and relatively soft cookie. So I set about concocting...
Hi, everyone! I'll cut to the chase . . . After much long and very hard deliberation, I've decided to shutter the Cookiers' Choice Awards, at least for the foreseeable future. For five amazing years, we've celebrated the incredible cookie contributions of our community through this awards program...
Ooh, I just love this time of year on the site, don't you? I mean, who needs visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads when there are so many glorious Christmas cookies dancing across our screens?! Tonight, I'm featuring this week's top ten cookies, but it should come as no surprise that...
This year's 3-D Christmas tree cookie was inspired by a project that my kids made in elementary school: a Christmas tree composed of stacked cardboard tubes (like those inside rolls of paper towels), all stapled together. Here, I made thick cookie rings and baked them close together so they would fuse into a sturdy structure. I then...
