I still remember standing in my kitchen at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night, surrounded by lopsided cookies, a puddle of runny royal icing, and actual tears rolling down my face. My daughter’s class party was the next morning, and I had promised — promised — to bring those adorable little flower-shaped cookies I’d seen … Read more
I still cringe — and laugh — when I think about the afternoon I tried to hand-paint a delicate geometric pattern onto two dozen Valentine’s Day cookies using nothing but a toothpick, a prayer, and what I now realize was an absolutely unhinged level of confidence. The result looked less like romantic lattice hearts and … Read more
I once showed up to my daughter’s school Valentine’s Day party with 30 cookies that looked like they’d survived a natural disaster. I had confidently chosen royal icing for the first time, watched approximately zero tutorial videos, and discovered — mid-party, in front of 25 seven-year-olds and their very polite parents — that my “flooding” … Read more
I still cringe — and also laugh until I cry — when I think about the holiday cookie party I hosted three years ago. I had grand visions of perfectly flooded royal icing cookies shaped like snowflakes, each one a little edible masterpiece. What I actually produced looked like a crime scene involving blue food … Read more
The first batch of royal icing cookies I ever made looked like something a toddler had decorated during an earthquake. I had spent three hours cutting out perfect little snowflake shapes, only to watch my icing slide right off the edges, pool into sad little puddles, and dry with giant air bubbles cracking across the … Read more
