Hello, cookie competitors. Please join me as I welcome 3-D cookie expert and longtime competition judge and sponsor @Beatriz Muller to the first Q&A session of my 2025 competition season! Beatriz is the owner of Gingerneers, winner of Food Network's Holiday Gingerbread Showdown, winner of the 3-D Cookie category in my 2021 competition, and an incredible support to my competition in so many ways. This year, she was one of the very first Gold Sponsors to sign up. I am most grateful for her generous donation to our competition prizes, which are NOW RINGING IN AT CLOSE TO $15,000 USD! 🥳🎉
Today, I had the good fortune of catching up with Beatriz on all things 3-D cookie-related, and that conversation is captured for you in the video below.
Note: This video was recorded live and has not been edited, so please ignore my bloops and blunders (I was less verbal than usual, LOL!) and any tech glitches (there is some very minor, intermittent audio feedback throughout).
Also, to help you navigate more quickly through the video to the spots most applicable to you, I've listed the topics we covered, roughly in the order they were discussed with the video time stamp indicating the start of each topic. That said, valuable competition and 3-D cookie construction and decorating tips are peppered throughout the video, so I encourage you to watch it in its entirety at your leisure.
Video Outline
- 00:25 - Format of Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™ 2025, including its theme (Nature's Symphony), competition categories and skill level classifications, schedule, and online registration and entry processes;
- 07:02 - Overview of Beatriz's cookie journey and business, which is focused on 3-D cookie work for corporate clients and classes (along with tips for cookiers interested in exploring these business sectors);
- 34:55 - Explanation of the 2-D and 3-D Cookie categories in this competition;
- 39:19 - Introduction of a BRAND-NEW collection of free 3-D cookie resources (cover image below), compiled by me and Beatriz, and designed to aid newcomers to 3-D cookies with their cookie entries; this downloadable guide contains links to various tutorials, videos, tips, and tricks, as well as links to winning 3-D and 2-D Cookie entries from recent years; and
- 53:57 - Beatriz's best tips for those planning to enter either the 3-D or 2-D Cookie category, or both!
If you have any questions about this post, or the brand-new 3-D Cookie Resources guide, I encourage you to ask them under this post or under the official Competition Overview post that contains every competition rule and the registration link. That way, all entrants can benefit from the answers to these questions. Both @Beatriz Muller and I will be monitoring both posts on a regular basis, and answering what we can. (Important Note: Because Beatriz is judging and because I oversee the judging process, neither of us can answer specific questions about how to construct or decorate your entry out of fairness to other entrants. Our responses will be limited to guiding you to general resources that may help you or to clarifying competition rules and best practices.)
Last but not least, I leave you with a list of this year's key competition posts/links for speedy referencing.
Competition Quick Links
- Competition Overview (with rules and registration link)
- Sponsor Offering
- 3-D Cookie Resources
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