This year's Sugar Show at CookieCon offered the following categories into which cookie entries could be submitted: Back to School, Wildlife, Super Heroes and Comic Books (a nod to Comic-Con, going on the same weekend, across the street from CookieCon), Anything Goes, and Mystery Shape. Entries in all of the categories (except Mystery Shape) were decorated in advance, and on display from Thursday afternoon through the end of the show. Attendees could vote once for a winner in each category, and the winners were based on popular vote.
In the case of the Mystery Shape category, the cookies were iced during the open decorating session on Saturday, only after the mystery shape had been revealed that morning. The hotel ballroom was chock-a-block with all of the materials necessary to take a cookie from bare to fully decorated. Participants had access to icing, colors, piping bags and tips, Kopykake projectors, dehydrators, airbrushes, materials for handpainting, and fondant and wafer paper for finishing up designs. We were only limited by our own creative energy and the clock. Open decorating started at 8 am, and mystery shapes had to be submitted by 2 pm and voted on by 4 pm. The room was buzzing with activity!
In addition to the popular vote, there were two other sets of winners: one chosen at random by the vendors, and another determined by the Instructors' Choice Awards. In the latter, each of the instructors of the Friday seminars (you can read more about them here) picked her favorite.
I hope you enjoy looking over all of these pictures. There were so many great entries, and I'm sure each of the attendees had his/her own favorites. It was fun to see the winners recognized for their creative accomplishments!
[EDITOR'S NOTE: A special thanks to Karen and Mike Summers of CookieCon for contributing all of the photos for this post, and for making the posting of this information so effortless for us. They went above and beyond, as usual!]
Random Drawing, Back to School
Random Drawing, Super Heroes and Comic Books
Random Drawing, Wildlife
Random Drawing, Anything Goes
Random Drawing, Mystery Shape
Back to School
Super Heroes and Comic Books
Wildlife
Anything Goes
Mystery Shape
Instructors' Choice
Barb Florin, aka BAKRGAL, has been interested in both baking and art since she can remember. Barb studied art in college, later graduated from pastry school in San Francisco, and, between jobs in corporate America, dabbled in her own baking business. However, it was only within the last few years that she became involved with decorated cookies. In addition to finally finding a way to combine her art and baking interests in one medium, she's met so many members of the cookie community who share a philosophy of creativity, inspiration, and generosity. In Barb's words: "It’s really a fun and fulfilling thing to be a part of!" While at CookieCon: Barb will be doing a "Day in the Life of Barb" series of blog posts that track her CookieCon fun, starting with the highlights of her pre-CookieCon course with Team Cookie and culminating with a recap of the Sugar Show.
Photo credit: Barb Florin
Note: This article expresses the views of the author, and not necessarily those of this site, its owners, its administrators, or its employees. To read more CookieCon 2015 updates from our special Cookie Connection Correspondents Team, click here, and for CookieCon event photos, click
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