Cookie Craft: From Baking to Luster Dust, Designs and Techniques for Creative Cookie Occasions Hardcover – October 24, 2007

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!!!

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 Inspiration2 - Ingredients, Supplies, and Equipment3 - Cookie Craft Planning4 - Cookie Recipes for Creating Blank Canvases5 - Prebaking Decorating Techniques6 - After Baking Decorating Techniques7 - Simple to Showstopping Cookie Craft Constructions8 - Freezing, Storing, Wrapping, and Shipping9 - Cookie Craft EventsResourcesIndexI 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.

Excellent book with great instructions. Can’t wait to get started making my delicious cookies.

great book for starters

For a home baker there are suggestions on supplies, equipment, prepping and organizing your supplies and decorating/icing instructions and tips, but the actual pictures of their decorated cookies weren't anything great (the simplest pipe and flood designed cookies-like some of the wedding/shower or Hanukkah cookie designs were the only ones I liked.) It is nice to have an assortment of info at your fingertips in a book rather than having to check online for things,and they do have recipes and good instructions on icing techniques and other things but I was hoping it would have a lot of pictures of cookies with designs that inspired me but it didn't, the color combos they used for the most part didn't appeal to me-most were very dull if not downright ugly. I will still give this book 4 stars as the visual appeal is subjective and they do give a lot of useful information.

I wanted to know how to decorate cookies with icing and looked at a lot of books in the library before deciding to buy this one. The first chapter has impressive examples of decorated cookies, but it's the later chapters that get down to the nuts and bolts of making decorated cookies: recipes for doughs and icings, an easy-to-follow chart showing how much of which ingredients to use to make how much icing, and clear instructions for flavoring, coloring, piping, flooding, and other decorating techniques, with helpful illustrations and pretty photos. I got lots of compliments on the first batch of cookies I made using this book!