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What makes the difference between a cookie aficionado and a cookiepreneur? Profit! Remember we are talking business here, and the bottom line is the bottom line.   I am going to dive right into this two-part series. Part I, Creating a Successful...

The first time I heard about shortening was when an American colleague couldn't find it for a recipe she planned to make for Thanksgiving dinner. When she served sweet potatoes covered with melted marshmallows, I wasn't immediately...

This cookie project is meant for a dad who plays or loves to watch tennis (or for anyone who does). I used the Needlepoint Mat from SugarVeil® to make...

One of the things I love most about the cookie community is how cookiers are always coming up with new and creative ways to take cookie decorating to the next level. There have been so many...

While digging in my memories for inspiration, hiking came up as the theme for this Father's Day cookie tutorial. I envisioned a landscape in the morning at the beginning of a hike, surrounded by a rock...

Ah, summer. When my kids were in grade school, those first few weeks of summer vacation were like paradise. Sleeping in, staying up late, slumber parties, and lazy days - summer was everything they thought they wanted. As the days passed, however, they’d always reach a point when...

Hi, all! I'm back from my teaching trip and ready to kick into high gear on Saturday Spotlights again! I thank you all for your patience and understanding over the last two weeks as I worked through some big cookie commitments on this end. I think I've finally recuperated...

Considering the thermostat topped 104°F here in St. Louis today, I probably should have entitled this post, "Top 10 (Dog Days of) Summer Cookies"! Even when it gets this hot outside...

This week's Spotlight affirms that we're in yet another ambiguous cookie zone, where themes straddle different seasons, holidays, and occasions. Here, we've got cookies that reflect back on...

Every week we get a delivery of produce from a small, local farm. The box is filled with fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, but the exact contents are always a surprise. When my kids are...

Fall and its vibrant colors are a joy for the heart and a great source of inspiration to me. Mums, pumpkins, and wagons surely have been my favorite things to “cookie” in past years...

I might as well have entitled this post "Dads Want Cookies Too!", because judging from the sheer number of Fathers' Day cookies posted to this site, Dads have been getting the short end of the cookie stick.

Hi, all! It's that time again! This week, our Spotlight features a nice blend of old-timers and newcomers, as well as a few Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #42 entries...

Phew! It's been a super busy weekend, what with cookie prep for my next video shoot, hosting a live chat with Autumn Carpenter, teaching a private airbrushing class, and trying to keep on top of my home reno decisions...

I just love this time of year, when spring turns to summer and color is bursting from every corner of creation! And so I thought, "What better time to do a challenge based on the color wheel?!"...

Creating dimensional royal icing designs on my cookies is one of my favourite techniques. I especially love the more complex designs that make cookies a thrilling challenge.

Hello, all! I’m Hallena and this is the Fantastic Bakes and Where to Find Them 's first tutorial. I will be showing you how to create your own Kopykake copycat for a fraction of the price.   What is a Kopykake?   According to the...

Hi, everyone! This week's Spotlight is a straight-up pure, unadulterated "top 10", yet, even so, Mothers' Day cookies clearly dominate it. With...

My tutorial for this month is focused on honing piping skills: basketweave, rose buds, and leaves, in particular. All of these things just require practice - and sometimes...

I've always worked hard to hide the seams of my past 3-D cookie constructions by mitering the edges, or by mitering and then covering the edges with royal icing. My goal was to...

This week, I'm changing things up again, all with the intention of casting the spotlight on a tremendously valuable, but sometimes overlooked area of the site...

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...

While fall still lingers on Cookie Connection, Christmas arrived in a beautiful flurry this week! Our hot list features an old-time Santa, a pair of darling birds wearing knit caps, a reindeer how-to (which first posted in 2013 and rises the top of our charts every holiday season), and...

There is something about painting on a cookie that I can't resist. People say it's a great stress release and outlet for self-expression and creativity. For me, painting is not only a very accessible and enjoyable...

High on spice yet relatively delicate in texture, this dough is perfect for 2-D cookies and small-scale 3-D construction projects, like my sandwiched baskets and Fabergé egg cookies shown in the attachments. It also spreads less than my...

Happy weekend, everyone! This week's Spotlight is a textural triumph, as many of the honorees also happen to be entrants in our ongoing Practice Bakes Perfect Imprinted Icing challenge! In fact, three (yes, three!) of...

As I mentioned in last month's fairy princess release, I'm departing a bit from my usual seasonal releases, and adding a few more event-related and on-trend themes to my stencil mix. No unicorns or llamas though, I promise! There's a...

As has been the pattern since the inception of Cookie Connection, we've predictably hopped, skipped, and jumped from Valentine's Day right into Easter. So, seeing as we have a...

At the start of this challenge, I asked you to take the traditional technique of brush embroidery and turn it into something completely new and unexpected. Admittedly, I wasn't sure how much could be done beyond the traditional ruffles, flowers, and beach scenes that we commonly see, but you...

This cookie swing project has been sitting in my mind for a long time, mostly because I was looking for a way to make it completely food-safe, if not edible. I imagined it as a centerpiece or a cake topper. But I couldn't come up with an easy way to make an edible crossbar and swing chains, so I ultimately resorted to...

I wish I could drum up some clever and catchy verbiage to properly introduce this week's top cookie art (because it is truly astounding), but Australian jet lag seems to still have the best of me. So rather than drone on with words that are likely to...

My mini-vacay in the Big Apple last weekend was just what I needed to recharge. Escaping the treadmill of daily life (and the confines of my basement work kitchen!) opened me up to sights and sounds I hadn't experienced in quite a while...

I like sunflowers. I remember, as a little kid, asking my parents to "kidnap" a huge sunflower that I had seen for a while towering strong, wild, and lonely along a road near a sunflower field. They finally said "yes", so we transplanted the sunflower in a large vase to our terrace, and I took care of it...

Between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and my niece Lara and her new husband Chandler, I've had a weekend wedding extravaganza! It started at 6 am with a livestream from Windsor Castle and ended...

When I first started decorating cookies two years ago, one of the difficulties I encountered was putting together a satisfying set of cookies with the harmony of shapes and colors that I admired in the sets of veteran cookiers. It was hard...

In a mere two weeks, the kiddos will be traipsing through our neighborhoods, in full goblin and ghost garb, in quest of Halloween sweets. I realize that we...

What a delight it was to return from vacation - nearly two weeks without a cookie in sight - to discover the many magnificent creations posted here on Cookie Connection in that short time!

Whether you attended CookieCon this year or simply read about the happenings here on Cookie Connection, cookiers near and far have gone through some form of withdrawal since its ending! This month, I hope to ease the withdrawal symptoms...

Just mention the word "marketing" to a cookie maker, and she'll most likely want to run and hide under a blankie. We all know marketing is really important, and we know we need to do it, but we don't entirely understand what it is or...

Well no one's ordered any autumn cookies from me this year, and I do love a collection of pumpkins and gourds. I always have a few in the window where I work. I particularly love the quirkily shaped, knobbly gourds, both beautiful and funny! Though...

Admittedly, I'm a little ODed on pumpkins and ghosts around about this time each year!  But considering we've got less than one week to go 'til the big day - and we've got such an abundance of great Halloween cookies on the site - I had no choice...

Well, I've got a bit of exciting news - for me and for you! Admittedly, this announcement feels a little anticlimactic, as I've been privy to this information for close to a year. Around about January, my book Cookie Swap , first published in 2009,...

Ok, it’s not really that dramatic. But it’s also not a fabulous, perfect tutorial with a happy ending either. Despite the fact that this is one technique that didn’t work out as well as I had hoped, I do want to share what I learned...

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...

I don’t know about you, but I have faced many challenges in my lifetime, the biggest of which knocked me down so hard I thought I would never survive. Oddly enough, it was through that challenge that I found my true calling and built a small...

Welcome to our first-ever Saturday Spotlight, where we at Cookie Connection plan to feature the hottest cookies/decorators each week in various (ever-changing and sometimes unpredictable!) categories.  Since Father's Day is imminent, it...