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...
While creating last month’s bamboo tutorial, I stumbled upon the idea of painting wafer paper with royal icing. This month, I was eager to explore the idea a little further...
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...
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.
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...
Fall and its vibrant colors are a joy for the heart and a great source of inspiration to me. Mums, pumpkins, and wagons surely have been my favorite things to “cookie” in past years...
I made these thank you cookies for the "Giving the Gift of Thank You" project with Anita from Sweet Hope Cookies - a wonderful cause of which I was so proud to be a part. If you’d like to read more about the project, which supports those living...
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...
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...
Easter is just around the corner, so I thought I’d make a chocolate Easter bunny cookie (or an egg with a pair of ears, in actuality)! This project is super easy, as it's done simply by combining basic cookie cutter shapes and decorating techniques. We'll use egg cutters to make the bunny's face and ears, and then we'll...
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...
Woo hoo! That's right, registration for the third virtual edition of Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™ opened on March 30 at 5 pm CDT! While the complete set of rules and theme description for the competition were announced in mid-February...
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...
One of the things I love most about the cookie community is how cookiers are always coming up with new and creative ways to take cookie decorating to the next level. There have been so many...
Hello! Welcome back to Practice Bakes Perfect! I feel like I may be starting to sound like a broken record, but I was really wowed by the entries to our Lambeth-inspired challenge. I was afraid that maybe, just maybe, I had overreached with this challenge...
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...
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...
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...
Spring means different things to different people. For some, it's the change in temperature. For others, it's the...
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...
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...
When I was growing up, our silverware drawer was always filled with a hodgepodge of cutlery patterns. Some were modern and streamlined, others vintage and ornate. I was known to...
When I was in kindergarten, one of my “assignments” was to draw a Valentine’s Day card for my mom. We worked on it in class for days, adding...
Hi, everyone! I’m back with our second (and last) installment of Cookier Close-ups featuring our 2017 Cookiers’ Choice Awards winners. A couple of months ago, we spoke with Cookiers of the Year Ginny and Doug Levack of Creative Cookier (here), and now we’re chatting with none other than swissophie (aka Sonja Galmad), our 2017 Cookie Artist of the Year...
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...
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?!...
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...
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...
I promise to make this post a pithy one. Considering how patiently you've been waiting for these results, it's the least I can do! First and foremost, thanks again to the team at BRP Box Shop - namely Kip Simpson, Connie Davis, and...
It’s almost December, and after so many years of sharing tutorials on Julia M. Usher's Cookie Connection, I declare my November/December 3-D Christmas tree cookie tutorial a tradition. This year's tree...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Hi, everyone! I've been so happy seeing the Cookie Connection home page in full bloom during the past two months that it feels a little bit sad to recap Watch-Learn-Create Challenge #54. As you probably know...
In my last tutorial, I lauded rice paper as an incredibly versatile medium and listed off some of the different ways I've put it to use. Here, I have yet another example for you. This jellyfish design plays to...
When my kids were little, every Halloween we would make ghost decorations from cheesecloth and laundry starch. The process was simple: soak cheesecloth in the starchy liquid, drape it over a rough form of compacted aluminum foil, and allow it to dry. The gauzy cheesecloth would harden, creating spooky, semi-transparent specters. In this project, naturally-starchy rice paper stands in for cheesecloth to make an edible version of this Halloween craft.
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...
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...
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...
I may have mentioned once or twice that Halloween cookies are my favorite. I pretty much wait all year for that one month. But it’s peak summer right now - time for sun and seashells, not ghosts and ghouls. So...
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...
Many years ago (almost thirty), a friend of mine and his girlfriend found a way to make some money by selling framed sailing knots. The knots, each labelled with its name, were glued onto a nautical chart together with other embellishments like mini anchors and ship wheels...
Valentine’s Day is not a big deal where I’m from; most people I know just ignore it. But I still like to make at least one cookie set for the occasion. Though I have to admit...
If you're still at a loss as to what to get Dad on this Fathers' Day, you're in luck! I've got another dose of top-trending cookie inspiration for you in this week's Spotlight...
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.
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...
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...
[EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm thrilled to announce the addition of another top-flight decorator to our team of contributors - the fabulously talented Lucy Samuels of UK-based Honeycat Cookies . Every other month, Lucy will be pushing your (and possibly her!) creative boundaries with an innovative cookie design and technique tutorial. For her debut post below, she explores an interesting twist on the wet-on-wet technique, which, as you'll soon see, is a great way to get some relief (so to speak)...
