Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new Watch-Learn-Create challenge! The theme for our 54th challenge is piped flower bouquets, and award-winning Ganna (aka Anna) Oliinyk of @Anna_Sunday_Cookers is our featured guest...
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...
In my neck of the woods, spring has sprung. The gardens are an avalanche of color and texture. Not only are the flower beds overflowing, but so are the calendars. There is...
We did it again! Thanks to several amazing sponsors, prizes for the 2023 return-to-in-person edition of Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™ are as impressive as ever. In record-breaking time (about half the usual), our sponsors...
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...
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...
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...
To my surprise, rice paper has become one of my favorite elements to incorporate into new designs. It’s such a versatile material. Rice paper can be molded (to create a balloon), imprinted (with the veining of a bumblebee wing), or kept flat (like the windows of a tiny cabin). It can be...
Hello, my name is Violet, and I love making needlepoint (aka cross stitch) pattern cookies. What you are looking at here is a large (8-inch) heart cookie decorated with a needlepoint rose pattern - my first cookie of this magnitude...
Hi, everyone! I am so happy and honored to be taking over the Cookie Connection challenges from Christine Dutcher (aka Sweet Prodigy) who has inspired us for the past 11 challenges in the Practice Bakes Perfect edition. Thank you, Julia M. Usher, for giving me the opportunity to host these challenges in the new Watch-Learn-Create format, which involves...
Hi, Cookie Connection members! I wanted to put the holiday rush aside for a moment to thank you all for your wonderful contributions to Cookie Connection in 2017. Without your posts, comments, likes, and advice to fellow members...
In this edition of Toolbox Talk, I'm zooming in on another ingredient that can mystify cookiers outside of the United States (US): corn syrup. It is sometimes listed in royal icing recipes, but it is not available all over the world...
Cold weather got you down? Well, I'm about to warm you up with a wonderfully cheerful giveaway brought to you by the talented illustrator Claudine Hellmuth !* Thank you, Claudine! If you haven't yet had the pleasure of "meeting" Claudine's...
Even though I am now living in Thailand where it is currently 85°F (29°C), I haven't forgotten the cold of winter, which many of you are now experiencing. So, I thought, what better way to get cozy than with felt warmers on hot cocoa (cookie) mugs?!...
It's funny how there often seems to be a space for a little honeybee or two on my cookies, and on occasion I've made a honeycomb for them to sit on. In this two-part tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a honeycomb cookie...
It's hard to pinpoint the exact birthday of this (my beloved) site. It launched "softly" into cyberspace in Spring 2013 with different people getting introduced to it at various stages of development. About a month before I announced its birth...
This month, we reunite with Ryoko Hayashi (aka Ryoko ~Cookie Ave.), our March 2022 site artist and longtime contributor to Cookie Connection and our Practice Bakes Perfect challenges. Ryoko, who hails from Fukuoka, Japan, joined Cookie Connection in June 2015 and, since then, has...
I'm back after a week off, and what a refreshing sight it is to see the marvelous cookies that made it onto our hot list tonight. Some have been dancing around the top ten photo feed for several days due to their ongoing popularity, while others are...
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...
Three-dimensional (3-D) cookie projects are my favorite, but they need to be broken in pieces in order to eat the cookies, and very often I hear "they are too nice to be broken" on top of the usual "they are too nice to be eaten"...
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...
Hi, everyone! As Bakerloo Station mentioned in today's Practice Bakes Perfect challenge recap, we unfortunately had to delete an entry from the challenge due to lack of compliance with our "no copying copyrighted work without permission rule" (which mirrors US copyright law)...
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...
As a cookiepreneur, you have so many important decisions to make - and none more important than establishing both a vision for what you wish to build and the starting point from which to build it. Launching a business without a vision, strong...
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...
Hi, everyone! If you've read the most recent Practice Bakes Perfect challenge recap, you know that our beloved host Sweet Prodigy has decided to move on to bigger and better things. While I couldn't be more delighted about the work Christine (Dutcher) has done to develop and support these challenges over the last two years, I am just as...
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...
Ooh, this is an ultra exciting Spotlight , as (I think) we have five newcomers to our weekly hot list! Special congrats to...
I’ve always had a love of blue and white china. The patterns are classically beautiful but with a striking contrast that makes me want to look closer. Recently, I came across this blue and white dinner plate. With its large-scale flowers, it felt like a...
Unbelievable. That is the only word to describe the entries we received for Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #34 - Inside the Box. Cookie creations that are 3-D take an extra level of planning, an extra level of skill, an extra level of patience, and, yes, an extra level of luck to pull off. Despite...
Your kids may still be lolling about and enjoying their summer leisure, but, soon enough, they'll be stocking up on school supplies, and you'll be struggling to roust them out of bed to get to the bus stop on time! I'd also wager that you'll be...
Hi, everyone! Thanks so much for the brief reprieve from the Spotlight over the last two weekends. Having a week off did me a world of good! I can finally think clearly enough to resume my cookie work! I sincerely hope you...
From time to time, I like to provide Cookie Connection members with more thorough introductions to our site contributors – after all, they give so generously of their talents here, it’s the very least I can do! And – surprise – now is one of those times...
I love lanterns, their warm light, and the ambiance they create in every season, both inside and outside the house. And so, for this tutorial, I decided to create a 3-D cookie version...
A new movie is in theaters, which is getting lots of Oscar buzz: La La Land. Have you watched it? It's the story of a pianist and an aspiring actress who fall in love (and dance, sing, and dream) in Los Angeles, the city of stars...
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...
I’ve been loving our October site art, haven’t you? The colors and textures are so perfectly evocative of fall...
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...
This was my first attempt at making a birthday cake in cookie format. I must say, it was fun to make . . . and it was even more fun to watch my friend's surprised face when she got it!
Easter is coming, and with it comes warmer weather, bright and lively colors, and (yeah!) lots of baskets full of candy: marshmallow peeps, swirl pops, chocolate bunnies...
Valentine's Day is just around the corner and what better opportunity to talk about love? In this case, love for a cookie decorating technique: the crackle effect!
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...
Wow! Last month, we had one of the liveliest chats in recent history with Dotty Raleigh of Sugar Dot Cookies, another fabulous CookieCon 2015 instructor. The chat room was buzzing! People came craving solid, practical advice about how to launch...
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,...
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...
Am I the only one shocked that Mother's Day is almost here? I have absolutely no idea where all the days have gone! There is still time though for those of us...
Hi, everyone! For this challenge, I have a special guest, someone you know very well. She comes from Italy, and she has been one of the most active members of Cookie Connection for years...
These delicate floral Easter cookies were inspired by a lovely (free!) vintage graphic from an old greeting card. The image depicts a cluster of daisies forming an egg shape, framed by a spray of dark greenery. I was immediately...
As a cookier who has spent hundreds of hours piping thousands of lines, it was only inevitable that a Practice Bakes Perfect stringwork challenge would eventually happen. This challenge is all about...
