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

~ Valerie Peterson (Author), Janice Fryer (Author)
Key Phrases: decorating technique, cookie slats, cookie crafting, Priority Mail, Star of David, Federal Express (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Wow. This book might even stop Martha Stewart in her tracks. The cookies are gorgeous and the level of detail is stunning. Instructions include drying time of icing, how to keep metal cookie cutters rust-free, a half-dozen Royal Icing recipes, color palette formulas, plus pages of templates. If cookies are your thing, this book is your lifeline.”

Minneapolis Star-Tribune 

“If you've longed to make those perfectly iced cookies you see in bakeries and magazines, there's a new book that will get you from dough to done with minimal hassle…[A]nyone who wants to make beautiful cookies will find [Cookie Craft] jammed with ideas and advice.”

J.M. Hirsch, Associated Press

“A must-have for this particularly driven subset of the baking crowd, by New Yorkers who write about food and have mastered pastry arts. The authors take an A-to-Z approach in planning, creating, storing and shipping decorated cookies.”

Washington Post

“Word to the wise: Thumb through Cookie Craft after eating. Otherwise, the pages packed with sugary confections will turn you into an insatiable cubicle cookie monster. Those who like to get their hands doughy, regardless of skill level, can find a manageable project here.”

Washington Express

"[The] cookies in this book whet the reader’s appetite . . . its tone is one of a helpful friend rather than stern directives."

ForeWord Magazine

 

Product Description

Elaborately decorated cookies fill the shelves of high-end bakery cases, tempting shoppers with bright colors and whimsical shapes. The cookies are beautiful, but buying them in a bakery can be shockingly expensive, and their flavor often doesn’t live up to their appearance. Now home bakers can have their pretty cookies and enjoy eating them too!

Thanks to the clear instructions and practical methods developed by authors Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer, amateur cookie crafters can achieve bakery-quality design and homemade fresh taste. Cookie Craft gives readers access to the entire world of decorated cookies, beginning with an inspirational gallery of 150 colorful cookies guaranteed to start those creative juices flowing.

The authors go on to discuss ingredients, supplies, equipment and technique. They include four delicious recipes for rolled cookie doughs (Traditional Sugar, Chocolate, Nutty, and Gingerbread) that provide perfect blank canvases for decorating, and, of course, their recipe for versatile Royal Icing.

In the most important section, they share the design techniques accumulated and perfected during hundreds of afternoons spent crafting thousands of cookies. Cookie crafters will learn how to pipe, flood, and sugar their cookies, how to design color palettes that work with every season, how to make cookies stand up in fun 3-D structures, and much more!

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 158 pages
• Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC (October 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580176941
• ISBN-13: 978-1580176941
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,276 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth every penny!, December 28, 2007

By	Toni "the bookworm" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)

Amazon Verified Purchase

What a gem of a cookie decorating book! Many books have been written on this subject; some OK and others are great---add this to the "great" list! Bakers and writers Valerie Peterson and Janice Fryer have turned out quite the encyclopedia of cookie design and here's why.....

Visually, the photography is sharp, clear, and very detailed; this is necessary in any instructional book that needs to show you how it's product is to turn out. And instead of one page and one cookie, the cookies are grouped into a category and photographed all together on that page. Each cookie stands out alone, but as a finished photo, each category of cookies is lovely.

On the opposite page of each grouping of cookies, they have made a outlined, numbered chart that describes how each cookie was decorated, step-by-step, so that you can't make a mistake. How much more could a cookie baker ask for other than having Valerie and Janice make them for you?

Peppered throughout the book are sidebars and hints on all the little things that you can do to make your cookies just that much more perfect, along with all the trials and errors they've had over their years of baking, to help you avoid the same problems.

Then, to make your cookie experience even easier, they made cookie templates that you can zerox and enlarge in order to make the shapes and designs you see in the book. This is a wonderful part of their book, but for myself, I don't have the time and patience to do that, so in addition, they have listed some sources for cookie cutters. My personal suggestion for a great cookie cutter company would be "Fancy Flours" at "www.fancyflours.com". This company literally has hundreds of the most unusual and adorable cookie cutters, and they have every single one used in this book as well.

As a little sidenote, in Chapter 7, they teach you how to make cookies for construction pieces like houses, sleighs, gift boxes, etc. It is an excellent chapter and is worth the price of the book all by itself. It details what type of dough to use to withstand the weight of the project, how to construct each piece, etc.

The book is sectioned as such:

CHAPTER ONE: COOKIE CRAFT INSPIRATIONS

COOKIE CRAFTS for HOLIDAYS and SEASONS
New Year's
Winter
Valentine's Day
Winter Into Spring
Easter and Spring
Mother's Day
Father's Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving and Autumn
Christmas
Hanukkah

COOKIE CRAFT for CELEBRATIONS
Showers and Weddings
Milestones
New Baby or Baby Shower
Kid's Celebration and Sports
Girlfriends
Pets

CHAPTER 2: INGREDIENTS, SUPPLIES, and EQUIPMENT
Flours, icings (thickness, thinness, etc), cookie sheets, cookie cutters, color charts, how to use your supplies

CHAPTER 3: COOKIE CRAFT PLANNING
Designing cookes (it even has a suggested sheet to use and mark your notes), color palettes, organizing your work area, cleaning up

CHAPTER 4: COOKIE RECIPES for CREATING BLANK CANVASES
Rolled Sugar Cookies
Coloring Dough
Rolled Chocolate Cookies
Rolled Nutty Cookies
Rolled Gingerbread Cookies
How to cut the dough, how to roll it out, etc

CHAPTER 5: PRE-BAKING DECORATING TECHNIQUES
Imprinting an Unbaked Cookie
Creating Windowpanes
Making Holes or Cut-Outs
Adding Dimensions to Cookies
Painting with Egg Tempera and Using Eggwash
Sugaring A Cookie or Attaching Add-Ons

CHAPTER 6: AFTER BAKING DECORATING TECHNIQUES
Royal Icing Recipes (how to's, the consistency needed, etc)
Piping and Flooding (the quintessential skill for cookie decorating)
Decorating Techniques
Using Fondant

CHAPTER 7: SIMPLE TO SHOWSTOPPING COOKIE CRAFT CONSTRUCTION
Multi-Cookie Creations
Stand-Up Cookies and Cookie Pace Cards
Cookie Messages
Party or Shower Favors, Cookie Boxes
Double-Sided Cookie Pops
Halloween Haunted House Luminaria (awesome!)
Santa's Sleigh Centerpeice
Baking Cookies for Construction

CHAPTER 8: FREEZING, STORING, WRAPPING, and SHIPPING

CHAPTER 9: COOKIE CRAFT EVENTS
Bakesales, parties, cookie swaps, etc

RESOURCES
Suggested sources for cutter, baking supplies, etc

This is a very sweet book of knowledge, hard work, and creativity; you will be very happy with this as part of your baking library, thanks to Valerie and Janice!

If after this endeavor, you would like to go to the next level of cookie creations, I would highly recommend "Creative Cookies" by Toba Garrett; the dimensions of this art are boundless, and Ms. Garrett will instruct you as she is a Master Cake Designer and Sugarcraft Artist.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Become the cookie decorator you've always dreamed of being!, November 12, 2007

By	Barbara Alpert (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

I was lucky enough to see the authors demonstrate this book's cookie decorating techniques at a store in Brooklyn on Sunday, and I bought two copies--one for me and one for a friend who always does a holiday cookie swap. I read it the same night, and immediately bid on three lots of cookie cutters on Ebay! I'm hooked, and I can't wait to try all their tips for cookie decorating. One of the smartest makes your cookies come out evenly, which has been a problem in the past. You just use two thin pieces of wood and roll your rolling pin along them to produce a perfectly even dough for cutting. The book is full of resources and fun ideas, but what captured my imagination was all the gorgeous color photographs! I think this is an amazing gift for any baker on your list, and you could make it extra special by topping your package with a fun cookie cutter. This isn't just a holiday book, either--reading it makes you think of all kinds of cookie "occasions". I'm planning to make cookies with my niece over Thanksgiving, and I can't wait!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous book full of cool ideas for cookie decorating!, November 2, 2007

By	P. Brown - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a beautifully bound book full of color pictures of beautifully decorated cookies. It's giving me tons of great ideas for the holidays. There are also a lot of helpful hints--(e.g., how to keep your cookie cutters from rusting, how to roll out the dough to a consistant thickness) as well as detailed instructions for really cool party favors, centerpieces -- all made from cookies. The instructions break it down really simply, so it looks doable too. This is going to be the holiday book of choice for this year!