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Hello and welcome to the recap of Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #50! I must admit that this challenge was by far one of my favorites, as it gave everyone a chance to...

Hello and welcome to a very special Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #50! In recognition of this extraordinary milestone, I thought it only fitting that we mark the occasion by giving you an opportunity to participate in not one – but 50 different challenges! This means you have...

We’re in the thick of the holiday frenzy now. Logically, I should be choosing more streamlined cookie projects this time of year to free up time for holiday meal planning, decorating, and gift buying. Yet, I seem to...

Hi, everyone! What a charming round-up of cookies I have for you on this lovely Saturday night! All of our Spotlightees, with two exceptions, are veteran honorees. Special congrats to...

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...

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...

When I was a small child, we had a family friend who was very old and well-travelled. I loved to visit her house because she kept a display of souvenirs from the various countries she’d visited. There were...

Summer is that time of year when Mother Nature dazzles us with a spectacular show of beautiful flowers and an endless array of stunning colors and exquisite designs. With so much inspiration all around us, now is the...

A couple of months ago, I re-posted my “old” Easter Cookie Box, a tutorial I wrote two years ago. The idea was that the sides of the box would look like a fence that had its vertical planks replaced with Easter cookies. I was surprised to see how much love this box has still...

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...

After seeing all of the amazing entries submitted for our Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #39, I must say that our mission of turning Cookie Connection into "Food" Connection was a success! You managed to create some incredibly realistic looking "food" cookies, and I am...

Happy holidays! I hope everyone has been having a festive, or even restful, couple of weeks. And if you've had more than your fill of quality time with aunts, uncles, and cousins, just sneak away to...

This is not my first project with cookie spools. The first one, back in 2017, was my entry for Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #21 (the bimonthly challenge series organized by Bakerloo Station here on Cookie Connection). On that occasion, I learned to...

Frangipani, pomelia, and plumeria are all different ways to name the same beautiful flowers. I like the contrast of their white color against their dark green foliage and brown branches. Under each frangipani tree, you can...

Before my husband and I were married - before we had kids and a home and responsibilities - time didn’t feel so precious. We’d regularly spend a day just driving with no real destination in mind. We’d cruise along...

I know, I know, it's a bit early for Halloween, but if we can have "Christmas in July" sales, TV shows, and all sorts of other promos, what's keeping us from doing "Halloween in July"?! Well . . . nothing's stopping me...

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...

Hi, everyone! I apologize for another gap in Cookier Close-ups, but at least this time the gap was much shorter than my last! To make up for my silence, I have an ultra-special interview this month. I usually focus on cookie artists, but, today, I’m departing from that norm by interviewing a product innovator who...

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...

I've got another cookie platter! Why?! Just because I like to design them, especially when they can be customized to the season, holiday, or occasion! I also like stenciled effects...

Well, it seems like we've finally emerged from winter here in St. Louis. Temperatures dropped below freezing only a couple of nights this week, my newly planted perennials didn't seem to object to the light frost on their leaves, and...

When I was a little girl, every morning my sister and I would hop into my mother’s bed. We would sit there beneath her cozy comforter and eagerly wait for her to return. After what felt like an interminable amount of time...

There are two ways to go about it. You can take a compass and draw a perfect circle and make two perfect eyes as neat as can be. Or you can...

Hi, all! My site support team, Hoop.la, recently completed a Cookie Connection software upgrade. A number of things were improved that only I, as an admin of the site, can see. But two new features were added...

This project is halfway between a cookie platter and a 3-D cookie project. It is once again intended to be a treat to share with friends, with the 3-D mug offering a new and different way to arrange and serve cookies...

Hi, everyone! Happy 2018! We're fresh from ringing in the New Year, but I'm already releasing spring and Easter sets for you! I know, I know, I feel like I'm living in some kind of time warp...

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...

Wowza! What a wonderful collection of cookies topping our site this week! As is often the case, there's no consistent theme among them, other than that each one is gorgeous in its own right...

When I used to work in a bakery, I spent most of my days making pastries and pies. It was relatively rare that I was asked to make a wedding cake - thankfully, because I dreaded those occasions...

The recent Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #21 about lace was the source of my inspiration for this project. Each challenge is a wonderful experience because it focuses participants...

Yes, it's almost time for the cookie event of the year - Cookie Con! Sadly, I can't make it again this year due to preexisting classes and other commitments. However...

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...

As much as I love Christmas – the time spent with family and friends, all those smells, and, yes, even "Last Christmas" by Wham! – there is always the thing about the presents...

Well, well, the day has finally come! After nearly a year in discussion, design, and development with my new partner Stencil Ease, I'm thrilled to announce the official launch of my new Prettier Plaques stencil series...

Icing sugar lies at the base of cookie decorating, be it with royal icing or glaze or buttercream. It was through Cookie Connection host Julia Usher’s comments about her teaching experiences in other countries that I realised that icing sugar isn’t the same all over the world...

I must confess: I love chocolate . . . in all of its infinite forms: cakes, brownies, bars, ice cream, pudding . . . even pizza! I hope there are no Italians in this room who might hear me, but chocolate pizza is pure sin!

Welcome to the latest Practice Bakes Perfect challenge! This time around we are going to work on a specific, and very versatile and useful technique - stenciling. And, I must confess, this challenge is challenging for ME!

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!

I know, I know, you've all been waiting with bated breath for this announcement! Yes, the nominations for the 2015 Cookiers' Choice Awards have been cast and tallied! Hurrah!

As you may have read in Monday's forum post, the site was down for a short period on Wednesday to allow for a software upgrade, which Hoop.la (my site host) has aptly called "The Proximity Search Release". (You'll see why this is apt in a sec.)

Deck the halls with bowls of cookies, fa la la la la, la la la la! See the blazing oven before us, fa la la la la, la la la la! Oops, wrong lyrics! What can I say, all of the amazing holiday cookies posted this past week have gotten me way into the yuletide baking spirit!

I was able to meet Katy Metoyer of Sugar Dayne at CookieCon 2014 and have been following her ever since. Over the last few months, I have noticed a shift in her decorating. Her style has become more expressive and free, filled with bright colors...

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...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: It is with hugely mixed feelings that I announce that this post will be the last in our beloved  Dear Yankee Girl series. I'm sad, because Kari is just about the best tutorial writer I could have ever imagined, so she will be greatly missed! (A gross understatement.) But I am happy, because Kari wanted to clear the decks to pursue some new and different things - which, knowing Kari, can only be great stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing where she takes her cookie...

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,...

It's that special Saturday time again - and boy, have I got a wide-ranging lineup of beauties for you!   Of course, it's the season for pumpkins, so there are a few different (and quite original) takes on those. You'll see a fair bit of black and...