Blog: Trending Over Last 24 Hours

Well, after a brief nod to St. Paddy's day a couple of weeks ago, you all pretty much hippity-hopped right on over to Easter, as confirmed by the abundance of eggs and bunnies hitting our hot list* this week.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to a new Watch-Learn-Create challenge! In this 53rd challenge, our featured guest Laura Saporiti shares all of the tools, techniques, and tips needed to paint watercolor florals on fondant...

While this Easter cookie box may look complex, it is actually quite easy to decorate and assemble, and a very manageable project for beginners. Imagine each side built as a fence with two vertical planks nailed onto two parallel horizontal planks. In this case...

Congrats to this week's honorees! Most are still-high-trending Easter cookies, though a smattering of springtime and Mother's Day-themed cookies also registers among the hot list. Special kudos to...

What's better than a solid chocolate Easter egg? Yes, you got that right - a cookie one! And, as luck would have it, you needn't hunt far or long to find plenty of them on our site! With Easter just...

The idea for this project was sparked by an ad on Instagram promoting stamps to make real wax seals. I initially wanted to make an entire wax seal cookie, but I instead ended up using royal icing to make seal transfers to go on larger envelope cookies. For the envelope design, I...

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...

This month I have a tutorial for a dimensional cookie platter comprised of two flowers whose petals, centers, and leaves are contoured. When I was thinking about how to decorate the cookies, I decided to...

Well, I wouldn't have guessed it, but after a week of being on vacation with nary a cookie in sight, I was overjoyed to return to work (aka  Cookie Connection ) on Wednesday, and to be inundated with all of your fabulous creations! I couldn't...

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...

This month, we speak with April site artists, Allegra Crea, who, for the longest time, I thought was one person! But as it turns out, “Allegra Crea” means “create cheerfully” in Italian and is the online moniker for the cookie decorating duo of Ivana Parisi and Giusi Urso...

With Mothers' Day just around the corner here in the US, it seems only fitting to highlight the top-trenders in this clip category tonight! And because we all know moms everywhere...

The sun is shining; the birds are singing; it’s a warm, wonderful spring that's quickly turning into summer. It's a time for new beginnings! I’ve missed all things cookie while I’ve been away, and so it’s with great pleasure that I...

Wow! The coming Easter holiday has certainly made you all even more prolific than you usually are! Given the wealth of bunnies and eggs still hitting the home page feeds (they started earlier than St. Patrick's Day), it's remarkable...

The cookie season is kind of relentless, isn't it? I mean, no sooner do Christmas and New Year's pass than we're dusting off our heart cutters and cranking the ovens and mixers in prep for Valentine's Day sets...

Ta da! I’m back – with another Cookier Close-up! This time, it’s with Noriko Forster, who goes by two cookie names on the internet - mintlemonade and Cookie Crumbs!

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.

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...

I never cease to marvel at how many different interpretations there can be of the same basic shape. And nothing underscores this point better than the variety of Easter eggs that have graced the site this past week!   While it's verging on too...

My first daffodils are up here in Missouri – a telltale sign that I not only need to rake up the residual fall leaves 😊, but I also need to get cranking on prep for the onslaught of spring events that starts at the end of March and continues without break through mid-May. Today I took these cheery harbingers of spring seriously and...

Oh my! We went from seasonal ambiguity to full-on Christmas cheer all in one week! Half of the honored cookies on this week's hot list are clearly working double time to get us all in the Christmas spirit, and, I must say, they are succeeding! The other half is...

A few months ago, I made a water lily pond cookie set inspired by a couple of real ponds that I saw during a trip. One pond had pink flowers, and the other pond had white ones. That set was my...

Too often in recent weeks, I've been posting our Saturday Spotlights on Sundays and using the "better late than never" excuse. Well, not this week! (Let me pause while everyone breathes a big sigh of relief . . .) Thanks to my husband...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: So, I've been pouring over your input -  here  - about what you'd like to see on  Cookie Connection  in its second year. And I'm happy to report that "more tutorials" is the most popular request so far - by a long shot.   "Happy?", you ask! Yes, "happy", because, you see, we're already taking steps to bring you exactly what you want! Just call us clairvoyant, if you please!   In addition to our monthly and bimonthly tutorials written by...

While contemplating paths in the cookie world, a Cookie Connection member recently commented in one of our forums about the seemingly endless choices for cookie expression. Should she blog? Expand her for-profit cookie business? Teach classes?...

Hi, all! Surprise! I'm a little early this time! I'm traveling tomorrow during record-breaking cold temperatures (right now, it's -12°F in Maine, where I'm headed) so I'm expecting the trip to be rather complicated with no guarantee of actually getting there per plan. So rather than...

At long last, it's the time so many of you have been waiting for - the grand winner reveal in the second virtual edition of Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™! But, wait! What happened to the finalist announcement, you ask?! Good question. A few weeks ago, I posted a notice to this site that answered this question quite fully. If you missed it, it said..

I wasn’t trying to pick favorites when I made a cookie inspired by one of my dogs. But ever since, my daughter has been campaigning for our cat to get a cookie of his own. I’m not surprised; they have always had a special bond. We’ve had our cat since my daughter was little, and they’ve been an inseparable pair. While the décor in her room...

Whether for a belated Valentine's Day celebration or any other day of the year, my February 2022 Dynamic Duos™ release is the perfect way to tell your loved one (or secret crush) that you care! With charming clover and bee background designs and messages such as...

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...

Most of my cookie projects are inspired by my memories, and so is this one, inspired as it is by some beach huts I saw in La Mer, Dubai (UAE), a beachfront with restaurants, shops, activities for children, and more. It was...

I'm up in Maine this weekend, checking on my long-distance home renovation, and it's as if I've been transported back in time by a month or two. When I left my house in St. Louis on Friday, it was a balmy 60°F, I'd shed my winter coat in favor of a light jacket, and I was giving happy nods to my daffodils and hellebores as I...

Hello! I sincerely hope everyone in the US is enjoying the long Labor Day weekend, and that others elsewhere are finding some time to chill out as well. I too am trying my darnedest to get in a little downtime before the fall sugar show season kicks in next weekend...

Today, I’m launching the first in my two-part series of interviews with our 2017 Cookiers’ Choice Awards winners, and we’re kicking off with the amazingly generous and ingenious Cookiers of the Year, Ginny and Doug Levack of Creative Cookier...

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...

With Valentine's Day fast approaching, there's no shortage of said cookies on the site, and, so, I'm featuring love-themed beauties for the second time in a month! Call me predictable if you'd like...

First off, please bear with me . . . I've had perhaps more champagne than I should have had before writing this post. But, hey, I'm entitled . . . it's my 22nd wedding anniversary after all...

As summer turns to fall (or winter to spring for those of you Down Under), you can definitely feel that change is in the air. Change was also all over Cookie Connection these past several weeks, in the form of...

I always try to take advantage of the times when I’m in between cookie orders, either by playing with new (to me) techniques or designs that are too time-intensive to sell. This tea party cookie satisfies both of those criteria...

Cream of tartar is one of the more mysterious yet most common ingredients in baking. It can also be one of the more elusive ones to find in some countries!

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...

They're breeding like rabbits - the Easter cookies on this site, that is! And the rabbit theme is even more prolific! (Only one of this week's top ten Easter cookies doesn't have one, or a part of one.)     Turns out, bunnies can be cute as...

Sometimes a personality or product becomes so recognized that the brand name turns into common vernacular for all such similar things (like “Kopykake” as shorthand for “projection device” or “KitchenAid” for...

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...

Hey, all! As you may know, I'm a sponsor of the upcoming Spring Cookie-A-Thon - and a mixer-level sponsor at that! "What the heck is a mixer-level sponsor?", you ask. Good question! In a nutshell, it means...

Wow! I know, my 2022 competition was just put to bed, but we’re already on to the next one! Because my competition returns to an in-person format at That Takes the Cake Show at the end of March, planning your entries can’t start soon enough...

These lavender cookies were inspired, in their entirety, by a video I shot last year while mesmerized by a butterfly moving from sprig to sprig on a lavender bush. When I replayed the video...