Cookie Coaching

Birthday Cookies for Mom
or
Second Try (after Kim)

When I first began to decorate cookies I had recently resigned a ministry job with children.  With an empty nest at home, that calling had become my whole heart.  Post employment, I had long hours to fill, and this task combined my love of baking and my desire to do for others.  Bonus:  none of my friends or family ever said no to free cookies!

As mentioned in a previous post, I had jumped into using royal icing after merely skimming one recipe, and had made delicious, though not-too-lovely cookies.  I posted a photo of those first cookies on my Facebook Timeline, and my friend Kim, who happened to be a former student I had taught when she was in fifth grade, inquired about them.  She had begun decorating cookies with royal icing just a few months ahead of me, but she had read recipes, searched out blogs and prepared for weeks and weeks before she made her first batch.

Kim is a loving and generous person.  She offered to send me blog links, tips she had gleaned, recipes, and basically everything I needed to bake a better batch of cookies.  This is one of the favorite parts of my cookie story:  Kim, who was my Language Arts student when she was 10, flipped the script and became my cookie teacher 20- um, ahem, -something years later!

The maxim every teacher in the world has quoted "practice makes perfect" is mostly accurate.  In my case, I'd say  practice makes gradually better and better.  I continued to be coached and taught by Kim, and encouraged by the positive reaction friends had to my Easter cookies and my flower and bird cookies for Mom's birthday that spring.  I was having a lot of fun, and cookies could fill many hours.  They were a simply a nice little hobby until I met the Angry Birds...  (to be continued)


Check out Kim's fantastic page Barefoot N Baking and give her a "like."