I have told you before that Pinterest is not your friend. Styled food photo shoots are so trendy and popular because we love to look at them. Enough caramel dripping down the side of the cup or one more pearl of condensation on the iced beverage or the way the light dances on the ripe, heart shaped strawberry can sometimes make us stop what we are doing and plan a whole party around that vision. Bakers especially fight the Pin...

When I started on this journey of concocting a signature flavor, I had a certain blend in mind. I will admit it is just a little bit exciting to have every flavor you like sitting on your counter and adding a drop of this and a drop of that and then baking with it until you have a winner. One thing I thought I knew was that creamy flavors (like butter and caramel) do not compliment citrus-y (lemon or orange) or strong flavors...

One of the most maddening challenges we face as cookie bakers is color bleed. I have tried to completely dry colors before introducing more colors,  outsmart the cookie by getting the colors as close as possible without touching, and even going back over the design with more frosting trying to hide the fact that colors are territorial and they tend to bleed. Most people look at that adorable cookie and are so impressed by the...

It has been an exciting couple of weeks for The Cookie School. About this time last year I began dreaming of creating a signature flavor and last week, it totally happened. It has been frustrating, exhausting and fun! We jumped through about a million hoops, hired some really smart people to advise us, blended a half million flavor cocktails, researched and marketed our product. The formula we landed on was immediately approve...

I am not a numbers person. That's why when I struck off to create a signature flavor for The Cookie School, I recruited a higher level math teacher to help me get it right. We did our due diligence. We measured, weighed, blended, tested, collected data, reconfigured, re-blended, and tested again until we had a winning product. We submitted our product to the FDA for approval, ordered up some bottles and caps, designed a label,...

It is a good thing I am a lifelong learner! The same day I defended my dissertation, my committee told me, "Congratulations! You can now teach YOURSELF." I shouldn't have taken them so literally. My life plan involved retiring from teaching school and sailing into retirement baking cookies and philosophizing from the porch swing. Well it started innocently enough with rolling out cookies and it grew. It grew exponentially....l...

The addiction begins with the vision for a beautifully crafted cookie and one stinkin adorable cookie cutter. That works out so well, you pick up five more because they are on sale at Michaels's. Then Amazon runs a set of 100 on the Deal of the Day and the next thing you know, you have enough cookie cutters to fill a bathtub. Some are metal, some are plastic and some are custom made with filament from a 3D printer. You have so...

Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox?

Everybody involved with an elementary school knows that the high holy holiday for us is March 2! Dr. Seuss' birthday! As a staple of foundational literacy and a proponent of Read Across America, Dr. Theodore Geisel is one of the most celebrated authors in history. As such, young readers celebrate his birthday by dressing up like their favorite characters and the teache...

Meteorologists are not the only ones who love groundhogs. If you know any elementary learners, chances are, they will be celebrating some General Lee this week They are reading groundhog stories, making shadow puppets and googling what groundhogs eat for breakfast! If you are the best room mom in the world, you can make these easy cupcakes! They are so stinkin cute that next year's teachers will be angling to get your child in...

The Cookie School's online store is up and running. Especially if you are a distance learner, that is an easy way to purchase supplies you need to bake and decorate your cookies. We stock everything we recommend in the online store and it can be delivered right to your door.  If you are local (Macon or Bonaire), you can avoid paying shipping and pick up in either location. Just let us know in the comment section which place is...