Inside the Mind of a Master Cookie Artist
This time of year, Patti Paige’s New York City cookie workshop is completely swamped. A 1,000-cookie order for the luxe jewelry outfit Tiffany & Co. looms as she churns out special batches for other clients, who clamor for fantastical, intricately decorated treats made to look like nutcracker drums, snow globes, Christmas wreaths, and an endless parade of gingerbread men. Then, of course, there are the bigger projects.
“We’re busy with one insane custom gingerbread house,” Paige told Yahoo Food, divulging that it may take dozens of hours to complete. If it’s anything like another recent project, a gingerbread house shaped like a vintage typewriter, she’s looking at many days of labor — up to 100 hours’ worth. “It’s a really long time!” she said.
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But it’s all in a day’s work for Paige, who Ina Garten praises as the “high priestess of decorated cookies.” Paige has honed her craft since 1979, when she started her own cookie company, Baked Ideas. Back then, there were few how-to baking books and no cookie decorating YouTube tutorials to be found. Instead, Paige called on her fine arts background to develop a radical new cookie decorating style that took the city by storm.
“There were people doing cakes, but there was no one doing cookies,” Paige explained of the early days. She hated that cakes took a long time to complete and required advanced planning, but cookies spoke to Paige’s desire to get her hands dirty quickly. “I would not consider myself a patient person,” she admitted.
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“It felt very original. I didn’t get the idea from anything,” Paige said. “I just took a brush, figured out how to make a cookie cutter, and figured out how to get icing on [a cookie] with a brush. I just kind of invented it. People started calling them ‘designer cookies,’ so I just kept going.”
Paige’s cookie decorating technique differs from many other cookie artists who have risen to prominence in recent years, including Sweetambs, The Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle, and The Bearfoot Baker. Several use a method called “flooding” to frost their cookies (which calls for outlining a cookie with a bottle of icing, then “flooding” it with more bottled icing to cover the cookie), but Paige instead opts to do most everything by brush. It’s a holdover from her days as a painter, although she also believes it results in a better quality cookie.
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“With a brush, you can get the thinnest coating of icing, you can dilute and thicken the icing as you need, and you can adjust the color easily,” Paige explains of her preferred method. “I’m only really concerned with someone trying to eat this cookie — I can’t imagine a layer of icing that’s as thick as the cookie itself!”
Ideas for cookie designs come fast and easy to Paige, sometimes in the middle of the night. "It just hits me, and I can’t get it out of my head!” she said. They’re playful, whimsical, and often a little nostalgic, like tropical-inspired cookies shaped like pineapples and margaritas, black-and-white Oxford shoes, mid-century furniture, and gingerbread men stretched into yoga poses. Even tacos and emojis are game for the cookie treatment.
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If hunching over dozens upon dozens of cookies and painstakingly covering them with intricate designs sounds repetitive, you’re right. But that’s one of the things Paige likes about the process.
“You just zone out and it’s kind of relaxing — meditative is the best word,” she explained. “I like doing the same motion and getting into a rhythm. I used to play tennis, and it’s kind like remembering how to swing in the same way each time. Once you get a rhythm going, it feels good.”
Paige’s steady popularity over the last three decades has, quite deservedly, earned her a place on the baking A-list. Her work has appeared in the pages of Martha Stewart Weddings, the New York Times, Brides magazine, Sweet Paul, O Magazine, and she sells her custom cookie cutters on her site. She’s even authored a book, You Can’t Judge a Cookie by Its Cutter, and has taken to social media remarkably well, boasting nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram alone.
Looking toward the future, Paige plans to teach a series of classes and workshops after the holidays (check her website for listings), and also wants to create gluten-free and vegan versions of her cookies with natural food colorings. But right now, she’s focused on getting that gingerbread house finished. It’ll take as long as it takes, she said.
“If you want to do something amazing, it just takes a little bit of effort.”
Need more cookie ideas? Check these out:
Salted Brown Sugar Toffee Cookies
How to Make Fudge Stripe Cookies at Home
Turn Basic Sugar Cookies Into Eye-Catching Christmas Pinwheels
