Creative Cookies: Delicious Decorating for Any Occasion

Great book. I always baked cookies but never with cutters for decorating. I made her butter cookies and cut them out with my cutters. PERFECTION!!!!! I'm still trying to get the hang of flooding, but the glace icing is delicious! You don't have to do the more complicated techniques, I didn't. I started out slow...brushing cookies with sieved apricot jam and pouring sparkles on the cookies. AWESOME!!!!

This book has very well laid out instructions and beautiful photos, which makes it very easy to follow. You can go through the sections one by one to learn different decorating techniques. And there are a lot of different ideas in the book, so you can enjoy creating new decorated cookies for a long time.One nice thing is that the book also tells you how well each dough and icing stores and how to store them, so you don't have to use an entire batch at once.I've found that it takes a little practice to get the consistency of the icing just right and to get a steady hand to outline and draw on cookies. And it takes a lot of setup time (e.g. making several colors and types of icing) to duplicate the cookies shown in the book. But overall, I think they can be duplicated pretty well even by an amateur.

and I have purchased several. Even beginners can recreate Ms. Garrett's creations because of her detailed explanations and pictures. Outstanding recipes, especially for the glace' icing (much more preferable than royal icing, I think. Besides tasting great it also dries hard to the touch which is a plus when you need to stack the cookies). She gives very imaginative and classy ideas for baby showers, mothers day, heart designs, monograms...to name a few. She also gives suggestions for adding your own touches. I especially love her wedding cake cookies (which you can adapt for b'day or anniversary occasions) and her "get well" cookies (you can use any message to personalize it). She provides full size patterns from which to make templates but I hope she comes out with copper cookie cutters in these shapes.

It is very difficult to find any information on Cookie Decorating. I couldnt wait to receive this book and i wasnt disappointed when i got to see it. The cover {which is beautiful}only hint's at the wonderful cookies inside.There are cookies for beginners up to cookies decorated with gumpaste flowers.It covers equipment needed and how to use them.It has a variety of icing and cookie recipes.Every cookie mentioned has a picture for you to go by. There are over fifty cookie pictures,several in each picture.My favorite is the cookie box! There are Wedding cake cookies, Groom's and fathers day cookies,cookies that are decorated to look like a quilt, emboridery,stitched, stenciled , monogramed, with flowers etc. You'll be able to create show stopping cookies and they'll taste great as well!! I love this book and i hope she put other ones out soon!

Finally, someone has written a book on baking beautiful cookies, complete with beautiful, clear, full-color photos, easy-to-follow instructions and great ideas for cookie gift-giving. There are many, many (believe me, I've looked) books on cookies, but all of them seem to neglect the fact that cookies can look as beautiful as any cake or pastry. A cake is a good gift if you have a way to transport it, or if there aren't terribly many people to be served from it, but cookies are easy to take anywhere without too much effort, can often be made quite a bit in advance, and can be made in "batches" so that many can share the extraordinary goodies. Toba Garrett is an experienced chef (I've been trying to register for her sold-out classes several times) with an impeccable reputation (not an easy thing to attain in New York City!) who writes in a very easy to understand fashion. The recipes are easy and the cookies astoundingly beautiful (and shhhhh!, they're not hard to do either--but your guests won't know that!)