Decorating Cookies Paperback – April 1, 2001

I bought this for a gift and paired it with some fun shaped cookie cutters. Great pictures to use for the gift idea.

Learning to decorate cookies in more creative ways and methods to make them last, yet they are eatable and pretty too.

The pictures and instructions shown in DECORATING COOKIES are enticing enough to call me to the kitchen and try a hand at turning my ordinary cookies into the extraordinary. Probably not a book for those who have time restraints. The cookies in this book are somewhat labor-intensive, but they are truly a labor of love.

This was an ok book, however, I was looking for something a little more sophisticated. The ideas were more for everyday cookies or for a child's birthday party or school function. I have not tried any recipes. There was no excitement in this cookie decorating book for me. Sorry.

The recipes were easy to follow. The pictures are great. The book gives a lot of different variety of decorated cookies.

Once I got the chance to browse through this book, I was sold. There are so many ideas for every season to decorate a beautiful cookie. All the ideas are doable for beginners also, even if some experience might help. Everything is accompanied by a beautiful picture of the end result and the directions are very clearly written. Also the patterns for all designs are included.I was delighted especially by the ideas the writer shows for the Christmas season, from ornaments to a cookie-nativity scene: they are all beautiful. Which doesn't mean that the flowers, Tucan, wedding and other designs are not equally beautiful.I was very impressed by this book and highly recommend it for the cookie-decorator looking for new ideas.

One day I told the late James Dickey, poet and novelist, that I enjoyed writing limmericks, a form of poetry he loved, but that I was afraid my limmericks sounded silly instead of clever. He sat back astonished and said, "Good Lord, everybody is SILLY. It is good to be silly. Don't try not to be, just enjoy it!" When I first laid eyes on this book, it reminded me of his insistence upon frivolity. Decorating Cookies is a delight with 175 full-color photos. I heartily recommend it to bakers and every pointy-headed intellectual I know. A little butter cookie dough, silver dragees, food coloring, and a homemade paper funnel decorator, and you just might have an epiphany worthy of the beautiful cookie designs in this book. Anybody who is too lofty to cut out and decorate a delicious cookie is unworthy of the cleverest limmerick or the headiest paragraph from James Joyce. For those of us who have delighted in the absolutely temporary low-brow art of cookie decorating, Joanna Farrow's book is pure inspiration from the cookie-angels. Here is the secret of marbling fondant for elegant multi-color icing. Her directions on feathering different colors on the wings of butterfly cookies are flawless and work perfectly. One immortal cookie design features sugared rose petals, which are a cinch to make following her directions. It is perfectly clear to me why the U.S. publisher picked up on this title published last year in the U.K. Here is a pattern for a more interesting gingerbread house than you will find in any kit, and here is a folded cookie screen of connected gothic arches painted with the city of Bethlehem. Her camel cookie is so cool it even wears rosette anklets to die for. Original stencils for all the designs are included in the back of the book. Truly a great book for Romantics like me who recognize the irreplacable decorated cookie as a vital icon of holiday celebration. Form literally becomes the content in a universal baking experience. Friends may say, "You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble for something we will devour in a few seconds." But everybody knows differently. Even Scrooges and punk cynicals are secretly thankful that such attention to detail is in their hands, however briefly.

Joanna Farrow's book "Decorating Cookies" is full of wonderful ideas and holiday suggestions, but beware of her butter cookie recipe which produced the worst tasting cookies I have ever made! They were flaky, and had a cardboard-like consistency. Stick to "The Joy of Cooking" (which has never failed me) for great cookie ideas.