My Not So Secret Obsession

January 17, 2011

I have one weakness. I should probably clarify that statement. What I mean to say is that I have one weakness which I’m willing to publicly acknowledge. The others I leave for you to guess and I encourage you to have fun with that in your free time. Anyway, here’s my weakness. I have a thing for sprinkles, jimmies, sanding sugar and luster dust. How could I not? Look at how shiny and pretty they are. What is not to love about them?

Knowing full well this might well ignite my sister’s unreasonable assertions that I tend toward being, I believe the word she uses is obsessive, (an assertion she continues to reiterate in the comments section of this blog as well as directly to my face) I admit without hesitation that I like to organize my sprinkles, arranging them occasionally by variety and other times by color. Is that over the top? Let me ask you, is it over the top for a woman to arrange her rings, necklaces, and earrings in separate compartments in her jewelry box rather than throwing them all willy-nilly and loose into a shoebox? If that’s acceptable behavior for her then why shouldn’t I have the same liberty to do the same with my cookie ornamentation without taking grief for it? Must I continue to rail against injustice in the world even in this?

And by the way, I realize that the use of the term willy-nilly is another indication of my advancing years along with hot flashes and the Carpenters Greatest Hits on my iTunes playlist.

Anyway, I love me some sprinkles. Sanding sugar is oh so sparkly, nonpareils perfect tiny balls of rainbowy goodness and don’t even get me started on disco dust. How can you not be inexplicably drawn to glittery candy dust that’s labeled, “non-toxic, not intended for consumption.”

So yes, I have a bit of an obsession with sugary cookie bobbles, cookie cutters, cookie dough and cookie icing, but all obsessions pale to this; my obsessive following of blogs by an amazing plethora of über cookie decorators. If you want to see who inspires me and whose cookies I primitively copy and learn from, here they are, in no particular order of praise-worthiness:

• Bake at 350
• Cookie Crazy
• Sweetopia
• Vanilla Bean Baker
• The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle
• Sprinkle Bakes
• Sweet Creations
• The Painted Cookie
• Diary of Faithy, the Baker
• Haniela’s
• 148 Cookie Street
• Glorious Treats
• Cancun Cookies
• Cookies and Cups

These are the blogs I follow every day (thank goodness they don’t all post everyday or there would be no time left for me to make my own cookies!) and there’s the awesome Cookies R Us forum and the great video tutorials at the University of Cookie and Karen’s Cookies and all the cookie cutter and cookie supply online stores and . . .

Okay. Maybe I’m a little obsessive. Just a smidge. But let’s just keep that between you and me. There’s no need to tell my sister.

Posted in Cookies