Day 16 (February 18), 9:00 am to 10:00 pm. I haven't planned much for today other than transit to Portugal. Though I am sad to leave Spain, I'm pretty darn excited to meet more cookiers in another part of the globe! I prep for a long day of...
Days 12 to 14 (February 14 to 16), 9:00 am to 1:00 am. After debriefing about our first weekend's worth of classes, Claudia (my host) and I have tweaked a few things for this weekend's series. We've decided to eliminate a few cookies in the...
[EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm thrilled to announce the addition of another top-flight decorator to our team of contributors - the fabulously talented Lucy Samuels of UK-based Honeycat Cookies . Every other month, Lucy will be pushing your (and possibly her!) creative boundaries with an innovative cookie design and technique tutorial. For her debut post below, she explores an interesting twist on the wet-on-wet technique, which, as you'll soon see, is a great way to get some relief (so to speak)...
Today marks my last day of classes in Spain, and it's bittersweet. Sweet, because my host Claudia Cetro and her team of assistants (aka mis amigas queridas) were absolutely fabulous in every respect. I don't even know how to express the joy of...
Wow, what a plethora of spring cookies popping up early on the site! I credit the abundance to the polar vortex wreaking havoc on many of us. Who wouldn't prefer daisies and butterflies to being inundated with snow and ice?! Or not having to decorate...
Day 8 (February 10), 10:30 am. Gad! How indulgent! I hate to admit it, but I sleep in much later than any reasonable person should. But what counts is that I've recovered from my marathon weekend of cookie decorating and teaching, and I'm ready...
They say “necessity is the mother of invention,” and nothing could better describe the life events of our next Cookier Close-up featured guest - Georganne Bell, creator of the popular blog LilaLoa and CookieCon 2014 presenter. ...
With a mere four days to go to my favorite cookie decorating holiday, my second sweet Valentine's Day Spotlight, promised over three weeks ago, is long overdue - but well worth the wait! Without further ado, here you have it: the hottest...
Day 7 (February 9), 8:00 am. Hmmm . . . I'm a little less spritely than yesterday when the alarm sounds off this morning. I chalk it up to the extra concentration required to teach without being conversant in the classroom's language. All of my...
Day 6 (February 8), 8:00 am. My iPhone alarm sounds off a full two hours later than usual, and I'm showing none of my typical hit-the-pause-button-and-roll-over predispositions. We were so organized at the conclusion of yesterday's class...
Day 5 (February 7), 6:00 am. iPhone alarm sounds off, but there's no point to re-setting it as I "slept" fitfully all night and, though exhausted, I'm strangely wide awake. The pent-up enthusiasm about the start of today's classes is the clear...
The diary of my Barcelona trip continues . . . Day 3 (February 5), 8:00 am. iPhone alarm sounds off. I reset it for 8:30 am, roll back into bed, and promptly fall back to sleep. Day 3 (February 5), 8:30 am. iPhone alarm...
WARNING: What you are about to read (a daily - or thereabouts - travelogue documenting my cookie teaching trip to Spain and Portugal) may be TMI for many of you. But for those contemplating similar trips, I hope it will serve as a healthy dose of...
This week, our CookieCon 2014 series continues with the talented and oh-so-entrepreneurial Susan Schmitt of The Painted Cookie. As it turns out, Susan harks from Wilton, Connecticut, not far from my...
Maybe it's my non-stop cookie decorating of the past week. Or the fact that all of the projects I'm doing are ones I've done before . . . Or the sheer quantity of cookies (about 3,000) that have passed before my eyes, hundreds of which are the EXACT...
