Saturday Spotlight - This Week's Hot List!

Judging from your posts this past week, there's been an outbreak of spring fever! And it's a downright epidemic - with spring-y cookies popping up everywhere!

If there's one thing I've learned over my last several weeks of travel, it's that, while we may all look and sound very different from place to place, the global cookie community is fundamentally connected by the same things: a love of family; a desire for peace, health, and financial stability; and a passion for spreading joy by sharing beautiful cookies.

Welcome to our Practice Bakes Perfect Challenge #15 Recap. Spring has finally sprung! Hopefully, you are recovered from both your Easter baking and spring-breaking, and are ready for a whirlwind tour of the amazing Instanbul-inspired cookies that I am about to present to you.

It's that time again to shine the spotlight on the top-trending cookies of the week! Woo hoo! With Easter just one day away, we've, of course, got the requisite number of bunnies and eggs on our hot list* today. But leave it to our Cookie Connection members...

Well, after a brief nod to St. Paddy's day a couple of weeks ago, you all pretty much hippity-hopped right on over to Easter, as confirmed by the abundance of eggs and bunnies hitting our hot list* this week.

Too often here in cookie land, we skip from Valentine's Day to Easter, without giving St. Patrick's Day even a sideways glance. I've never been quite sure why that is, as leprechauns, when done right, can be so darn cute.

This Saturday Spotlight may be late, but it's super sweet! Yes, it's the long-awaited announcement of the 2015 Cookiers' Choice Awards winners!

With Valentine's Day nearly past and Spring not quite yet here, I thought it was going to be hard to characterize the cookies hitting our hot list* this week. But, boy oh boy, was I ever wrong!

Well, you clearly decorated your hearts out - literally and figuratively - this week! We've had an impressive influx of heart cookies since our last Saturday Spotlight, all in anticipation of Saint Valentine's Day.

While there were still a few Christmas hold-outs topping this week's hot list*, like the lovely spruce sprig pictured above by Honeycat Cookies, it seems like the vast majority of you have promptly changed color palettes and moved from evergreens and snow onto hearts and roses.

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!

Happy belated New Year, everyone! I hope you all welcomed in 2016 with a bang - and lots of cookies, of course! (So sorry for the delayed Spotlight, but I was otherwise occupied this weekend with various renditions of Auld Lang Syne...