Hi, everyone! It's great to be back to the Saturday Spotlight routine after a brief breather for the Thanksgiving holiday. (Though, admittedly, it hardly feels like I had any vacation at all after being back to work for a week . . . it's been a zany one, what with complicated site updates and all!) From the looks of this week's hot list, I can see that, while I was away, everyone...
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...
My neighbors are expecting their first baby any day now. A little girl! With comically unfortunate timing, our street is being closed for two weeks for repaving. We’ve all had to park our cars a few blocks away on another street or risk being...
What could be more basic than water? On one level, water is so essential that no life would exist without it. And yet, on the other hand, few things are as complex as water. It can be...
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...
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...
I just returned from my first holiday party of the year, and, boy, did it ever put me in the Christmas spirit! (And solidly remind me that I need to get cracking on my decorating!)...
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!
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?...
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...
My past November tutorials have always been about 3-D Christmas trees. To refresh your memory, below is a small gallery of those projects and their variations, which include...
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...
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...
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...
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?!...
Deck the (Cookie Connection) halls with boughs of holly! Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! 'Tis the season to be jolly! Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! I just love-love-love-love all the...
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, after a very long fall season in St. Louis (my neighbor's golden gingko tree still had all of its leaves until last week), I can officially declare it's winter! I had to don triple layers today to...
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...
Fellow cookiepreneurs, the holidays are upon us, and I hope this month’s post finds you in high spirits and looking forward to the coming days. Before I begin, I wanted to share that I recently received feedback that some of you would be...
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 chalkboard shelf is a popular item among cookie decorators. It is used to display cookies at farmers' markets, during pop-up sales at home, during birthday parties, and so on. Here are a couple of pictures of a real display shelf with cookies, kindly shared with us by...
I'm a collector (my husband might say "hoarder"!) of many things, but one of my favorite collections is my vintage holiday cards. Around this time each year, I repurpose them into...
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great holiday and is ready to jump right back into cookies! I took a few days off from decorating cookies myself to...
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...
Ooh, I just love this time of year on the site, don't you? I mean, who needs visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads when there are so many glorious Christmas cookies dancing across our screens?! Tonight, I'm featuring this week's top ten cookies, but it should come as no surprise that...
This post is all about my introduction to meringue powder, one of the subjects that initially spurred the idea for this Toolbox Talk column. Questions about meringue powder come up regularly on Cookie Connection, as there seem to be many differences between brands...
Did you ever imagine that something as simple as decorated cookies - a straightforward mixture of sugar, flour, and a few other things - could connect us so powerfully? When I started this site, I certainly had hopes of making cookie friends outside...
Growing up, I was fortunate enough to celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. At our house, Hanukkah was always a quiet affair with an understated elegance. As a child, I would have called it “fancy”. Maybe it was the colors, the deep blues and shiny metallics, that made it feel so sophisticated. Maybe it was...
If there’s one thing my current trip to my childhood home in Connecticut is teaching me, it’s that I’m way too overreliant on high-speed wifi! I can’t upload photos to my video team without it; I can’t review videos or post them without it; and, worst of all, I can’t post Saturday Spotlights without it...
I’m back with our second-to-last Close-up with CookieCon 2018 instructors. (I know, it’s hard to believe, but by January, I’ll be moving on to the 2019 instructors!) Here, we’re catching up in more detail with Andrea Walters of Andy Kay’s Cookies, with whom we first chatted back on October 6, here. We learned then that...
By now, I'm sure everyone's ovens are cranked into high gear, what with Christmas just around the corner. But before you get all of your cookies safely stowed on cooling racks, I urge you to stop and smell what's been baking here on Cookie Connection ...
You've probably noticed that most of our Cookier Close-ups have focused on how people got started in cookies and the business of cookie decorating. (And that's because they have!) This is all well and good, perhaps, but I’ve decided to...
It’s hard to believe that the subject of our next Close-up has only been decorating for a little less than three years, but, yes, it’s very true. Marta Torres, aka The Cookie Lab , may be a relative newbie to cookie-land, but she...
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!
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...
The initial idea for this project came while sketching Christmas trees on paper. The triangular shapes soon became a pyramid, which reminded me of the playing card towers I used to build as a child...
Lovely for Easter, May Day, or Mother's Day, these baskets are made from contoured cookie dough covered with frosting sheets. Simply swap out what's tucked inside to adapt them to a particular holiday! What you’ll need for one basket: Cookie...
Many thanks to Gingerland, aka Berni Solti, for once again so generously donating content to the site. She's been a prolific contributor of cookie art for our site banner and backdrop, but, this time, she's gone all out with this adorable guest tutorial! Enjoy! Much gratitude to Berni!...
Wow, did you all kick off January with a bang, or what?! If the cookies on this week's hot list* are any indication of what 2016 has in store for us, then it's going to be a banner cookie year!
With all the baking TV shows being shown globally, the art of baking and decorating has become a very popular hobby. When you watch beautiful things being being made on TV, pick up a cookie decorating book in a store, or see some beautiful...
I have been asked how I make some of my more elaborate cookie sets. You know, those sets with all the flowers? Wait. You’re right. Pretty much ALL of my cookie sets have flowers . . . but you guys don't mind, right? So, a set like this....
This month's tutorial is all about royal icing transfers, which are decorations piped on parchment paper or acetate and then attached to cookies once they are dry . . . but we are not using cookies! Although I like the idea of decorated cookies as place cards, I like less the idea of...
Food coloring is arguably the second most important element in cookie decorating after the royal icing itself. The art of choosing colors and/or mixing the exact shade are the subjects of many blog posts...
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...
After two 3-D cookie tutorials in a row, I wanted to make something flat but with some easy added depth and dimension. So I decided to create a simple two-color winter cookie wreath, where the cookies are...
The summer of 1989 was one of my favorites. I spent my days with friends by the pool and my nights camping in the backyard. We watched scary movies, giggled about boys, and crimped each others’ hair. And all the while...
This year's 3-D Christmas tree cookie was inspired by a project that my kids made in elementary school: a Christmas tree composed of stacked cardboard tubes (like those inside rolls of paper towels), all stapled together. Here, I made thick cookie rings and baked them close together so they would fuse into a sturdy structure. I then...
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...
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...
