Saturday Spotlight: Top 10 Cookies
I am slowly (but surely!) planting my outdoor flower containers. As much as I love the creative process of designing the arrangements, I have to admit, it can be...
I am slowly (but surely!) planting my outdoor flower containers. As much as I love the creative process of designing the arrangements, I have to admit, it can be...
Ready for it?! The complete set of rules and theme description for the third virtual edition of Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™ are here, which means you can safely start planning and even making your entries! And, since the competition is online, anyone (13 years of age or older) anywhere in the world can enter!...
So if you missed today's live competition Q&A with me and competition judge/Gold Sponsor Laura Saporiti, no worries! Here you'll find the replay video...
Yes, it's your lucky day. I've finally got the site's first official giveaway ready for any and all interested takers! I'm calling this one The Great Spring Summer Cleaning Giveaway, because I had every intention of doing it in the spring,...
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...
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...
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...
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!
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...
Foregoing fancy meals or pulling decorating all-nighters in order to scratch together the change for CookieCon ? Hoping you'll win the lottery so you won't have to go another year without meeting your online cookie friends? Well, hope no...
Spring means different things to different people. For some, it's the change in temperature. For others, it's the...
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...
Hi, everyone! Here I am with the recap of Watch-Learn-Create Challenge #56 featuring Noriko Forster, aka mintlemonade (cookie crumbs). In her kickoff video, Noriko showcased how to create three types of...
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...
One of the amazing things about Cookie Connection is that you can find quite literally tens of thousands of cookie clips from which to draw inspiration or learn new techniques. Clips are...
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...
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 had always intended to do a tutorial on my Halloween spiders for you all, but I just didn't fancy repeating the same cookies. So I set to thinking how I could change things a bit, and do something different. Well, for a start, I wanted to have a bit...
Today marks my last day of classes in Spain, and it's bittersweet. Sweet, because my host Claudia Cetro and her team of assistants (aka mis amigas queridas) were absolutely fabulous in every respect. I don't even know how to express the joy of...
Spring is in the air! Can you feel it? Flowers and trees are coming to life again, and everywhere you look the colors are changing from brown to bright green...
When I was a kid, one of my father’s colleagues, Mr. Oshiro, introduced me to origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. Several weeks later, our local summer vacation program offered an origami course for children. That was it - I was lost.
Hi, everyone! This month, we’ll be getting to know our May 2020 featured site artist Icingsugarkeks, aka Gabi, a whole lot better! Hurrah! Gabi also happened to be the brainchild and graphic designer behind our current June site art. Gabi would prefer...
Because I so much liked using the wet-on-wet technique to make the sunflower in my last tutorial, I decided to use the same technique to make a poppy this month. Poppies are wild; their stalks are irregular; and their petals are always messy. In other words, they're ideal...
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...
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,...
In real life, my tastes verge on plain. I’m a no makeup, jeans-and-t-shirt sort of girl. Naturally, my wedding ring is a simple gold band, and that’s exactly how I like it. Despite these tendencies...
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...
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...
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...
Ooh, I love giveaways, and there's nothing better than one that comes close to Christmas time! I'm not sure I could ever part with the contents of this giveaway if I were to win, but they sure would make wonderful Christmas gifts for anyone who loves...
My mom can grow anything. It wasn’t always so. She started out a city kid from New York with little opportunity or care to nurture a green thumb. But with the 1960s came a newfound desire to commune with nature. My parents moved to a...
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...
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...
People ask me all the time about the lettering and painting on my cookies. I use a combination of royal icing effects and colors, and handpainted details. One of the most important things to me when I'm painting my cookies is my palette. I like...
It seems many of you are still celebrating Easter, as seven out of the ten cookies on this week's hot list center around Easter eggs, bunnies, or religious themes. But hey, no complaints here! I mean what could be more splendid than...
I love the stretch between Christmas and New Year's Day. It's a time when it seems as though the holiday pressure has receded but the celebratory atmosphere remains. At my house...
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?!...
With tomorrow being the official first day of spring, it seemed only appropriate that we celebrate with a giveaway! Woo hoo! Thanks to the very generous and talented cookie cutter designer Michael Bonne , dubbed America's Favorite...
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...
Hi, everyone! I posted the following comments as a footnote to the recently released Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #49 recap. They're pretty important, so I wanted to be sure everyone sees them and takes a moment to respond. The future of Cookie Connection and our challenges depends on your input...
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...
I’m really terrible at piping people. I give them a try every once in a while when I’m inspired by some tutorial or image, but my people never look right. Their eyes might be uneven, their noses too large, or their hands so full of fingers that they look...
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...
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...
Next up in our site artists series is Marie Elgaard of Lille Kage Hus in Randers, Denmark. Marie, as you may recall, won top honors in Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #13 for the banner and backdrop she designed for the month of February, which are now beautifying our site.
We are in full Thanksgiving mode at my house. There will only be a small gathering this year but I am still pulling out all the stops. The bird, the sides, and, of course, all of the sweets! I like to do...
If you can remember as far back as July (my bad for getting behind on these Close-ups), the wonderful Cookies Fantastique, aka Carol Mattison, was our featured site artist, wowing us with a rather spectacular Fourth of July set! In her site artist forum intro published around that time, Carol mentioned that...
After deliberating and deliberating and then deliberating some more, our esteemed panel of judges has finally reached a verdict in our 2016 Cookiers' Choice Awards! Before I reveal the winners, let me just say...
Say hello to our new site sponsor, Mama & Madison , maker of lovely custom aprons with a definitive retro flair! They're perfect for CookieCon 's Blinged Out Apron Contest or milling about CookieCon and other baking events in style. Heck, they're even great for those stay-at-home decorating days when your sweats are taking a few much-needed cycles through the wash! As our luck would have it, Tracie Esposito, owner and chief apron-maker of Mama & Madison, has very...
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...