Cookie Craft: From Baking to Luster Dust, Designs and Techniques for Creative Cookie Occasions

I love to bake when I have extra time and this book has so many different designs and techniques. I love that I can try something new and there is a step by step book that helps me out. Our friends and family absolutely love the creative cookies that I make and they taste fantastic! Definitely recommend this book and its a fair price for all the information it contains.

This book is for people who like to get really obsessive with their cookies. While it provides an excellent review of the basics of baking cut-out cookies (including recipes), the best part of this book is the discussion of many permutations on the basic outline & flood technique of icing cookies. It's easy to do, and once you get the hang of it, you'll have fun with all the variations (e.g. flood-on-flood details, flooding over piping for texture, using toothpicks to marble colors). The book also addresses the use of sugars (both pre- and post-baking), imprinting, stencils, and use of other decorations (nuts, candies, fondant, etc.). Even if you're experienced with cookie decorating, you'll likely pick up a ton of new ideas, tricks, and tips. The book itself is very well-organized; the layout and photography are lovely and diagrams are included where appropriate.

I recently became interested in baking cookies for decorating. I was inspired by a tv show that had gorgeous cookies decorated with royal icing. I am so glad I bought this book. I made the sugar cookies and followed the recipe and the hints for rolling out the dough and making the cutouts -- they tasted great, looked nice and didn't spread. I also made royal icing with meringue powder and gel paste colors -- beautiful! I think the photographs are very helpful and get the "creative juices" flowing. I also like the decorating techniques explained. I can't wait to make the chocolate cookies this weekend and work on more decorating skills. I think this book has a lot to offer beginning and more advanced bakers. This book will stay on my shelf for many years to come!

This was my first book from Cookie Craft. I have been baking cookies for a few years, but just for Christmas. This book had some great ideas for other occasions too. I thought it did a great job on not only decorating, but helped to get your supplies/kitchen organized before starting the decorating process. Great tips/hints throughout. Good info on web-sites for ordering supplies also. Great pictures of cookies for all occasions!

Because I have not done cookie decorating for many years, I thought it would be fun to get back into the swing of things. Things have certainly changed and there are many more techniques and fun tools to use when I used to to decorate them. This book has a veritable wealth of information and a great deal of pictures that make it easier to understand topics covered in the book. The Chapters: 1 - Cookie Craft Inspiration 2 - Ingredients, Supplies, and Equipment 3 - Cookie Craft Planning 4 - Cookie Recipes for Creating Blank Canvases 5 - Prebaking Decorating Techniques 6 - After Baking Decorating Techniques 7 - Simple to Showstopping Cookie Craft Constructions 8 - Freezing, Storing, Wrapping, and Shipping 9 - Cookie Craft Events Resources Index I appreciated how there is an area that discusses how to organize your cookie cutters. Being someone who is highly organized, this fit right in with what I like to do with anything that I have. The book suggests something like Excel to keep track, which is a great idea, but I like to see pictures as well and instead of putting those pictures into Excel, I have all of the supplies and cutters organized into Microsoft One Note, just as good. Planning for making cookies is important to me. I know that some people have the talent of seeing a blank cookie and can turn it into a masterpiece. Not me, I need to plan and figure out what I am going to do. I appreciated this part of the book. This book really has so much valuable information, I am very pleased with it. The only drawback is in the resources area, not all of the links are valid, so perhaps some of the vendors no longer exist, and I also realize there are a great deal more than are mentioned in this book, but it is a good start for anyone choosing to pursue this fun craft.

As an avid baker I am thrilled to have found this book! I won't repeat the other fabulous reviews (of which I predominantly agree), but I will say that the dough recipes, information about how to roll out and chill the dough between paper parchment sheets, and the gorgeous photos/details to inspire the most reluctant baker are more than worth the price of this book! That said, I have three minor issues with the book: 1) The authors don't mention bringing the cut cookies to room temperature before baking (unless I missed that part of the book). That allows the cookies to rise as much as possible. When I didn't do that with two batches, the cookies were denser and harder upon drying. 2) The royal icing flood recipe using powdered egg white produced icing that was WAY too runny. I used half of the water in a subsequent batch and it came out better. I prefer the Wilton website royal icing or color flow icing recipes. Note: Color flow produces icing that dries shinier than royal icing. 3) Parchment paper is incredibly expensive if you buy it on the roll...so a quick Google search produced several sites that sold them by the sheets. The authors briefly mention precut parchment sheets in the book; I think that they are indispensable now that I've used them. I was previously devoted to my four Silpat mats but have since retired them. The Webstaurantstore website produced the best value - I purchased 1,000 16 x 24 Quilon parchment sheets (enough for several years of frequent baking), 1 dozen small plastic squeeze bottles with caps, 3 sizes of Vollrath silicone spatulas, baker's hats (for my kids), and aprons for each of us for a relatively nominal fee. The parchment sheets alone were an amazing find! I fold them in half to roll out the dough between the two halves then run a knife along the folded edge to use 1/2 on each of my two 12 x 16 baking pans. For environmental reasons I didn't use the authors' suggestion of using a plastic disposable table cloth. My kids (ages 10-13) made a bit of a mess during our several decorating sessions but it wasn't anything that a few wet sponges or towels couldn't take care of. Decorating with younger kids may need more preventative strategies. ;-) I used paper plates and/or cafeteria-like trays with my kids when they were younger. One last note: I tried baking a single sheet of cookies in the middle of the oven and compared it to using two baking sheets spaced evenly in the oven (rotating them halfway through baking as the authors describe). While the single sheet did come out a bit better, it was only marginally better. If you need cookies that are done precisely, then a single batch is better. If you can live with a bit of variability, baking two simultaneously won't dramatically alter the finished product. Happy Baking!!!

Okay, maybe life-altering is a little strong, but this book is amazing! The pictures are so inspiring, and I adore the cookie recipes. It is a must to use the lemon zest in the white cookie mix. Overall, the instructions are very clear and helpful in making beautiful cookies that are tasty. I bought this book for a friend who was already quite adept at making roll-out cookies, and she has thanked me multiple times for giving her this book because of all the helpful techniques she has learned. Finally, the cookies freeze beautifully. I made over 300 cookies to use as favors for my wedding, and they tasted just as good coming out of the freezer as they were fresh.

I was so excited to get this book to help me with certain aspects of my cookie designs. While the book is full of helpful tips, I was very disappointed with the pictures. They looked really sloppy & that was shocking to me, especially coming from 2 very talented women. It really looked like they just threw the cookies together for the book. I believe that when you do something, no matter what it is, you take your time and take pride in your work. This book showed what cutters to use for the specific cookies and quick write ups on basic decorating. I really had higher hopes for this book. This book is not written for beginners or intermediate. There are a lot of things in this book, that if you didn't know what the supplies that were being used already were, you would be lost! Thankfully I know my cookie tools! I did buy this book used and it was in PERFECT condition!!! I am 100% happy and satisfied with the Seller, just not with the book itself.

Bellissimo libro.... ho trovato interessante la panoramica sulle tecniche per decorare i biscotti. Interessante la tecnica della colorazione del biscotto con l'albume. Non l'ho ancora provata ma mi ripropongo di farlo al più presto. Ottime le ricette proposte.

Esperava mais, achei muito fraco e o trabalho feio tbem não recomendo este livro

クッキーの美しさにうっとりします。 日本のものと違って、大人っぽいアイシングも新鮮でした。 けばけばしいのとは違う、上品なアイシングクッキーです。 英語がわからなくても、イラストと単語でなんとなく意味がわかります。

I was looking for a book about cookies and i can say that this is perfect. I'm a starter and i found a lots of nice, interesting tips that helped me a lot, little tricks to keep the cookies safe and to treat them in the right way. If you are a collector of nice and helpful books as i'm, you can't miss this beautiful, helpful book.

Exactly what I was looking for. Perfect for my needs.