Meet Our Guest 'Grammer of the Week: @Bakedideas
Each week we’re teaming up with a popular food-stagrammer who will take over our Instagram feed and fill it with their own delicious pics. This weekend on #TastyTakeovers, master cookie artist Patti Paige of Baked Ideas is our guest. Learn her secret for taking delicious photos in the Q&A below and head over to @YahooFood on Instagram to watch her foodie adventures unfold all weekend long.
Photo: Instagram/bakedideas
Name/Instagram Handle: Patti Paige/@bakedideas
Yahoo Food: Tell us a bit about yourself!
Patti Paige: I grew up in Long Island went to college in Ohio, and then moved to downtown New York City where I still live with my husband, a sculptor. My daughter lives in Brooklyn and is also an artist. After a brief stint teaching art to kids, I began making my living doing all kinds of specialty baking and started my company, Baked Ideas.
Royal icing queen and author Patti Paige of Baked Ideas. (Photo: Patti Paige)
When I am not baking or decorating (which is almost never, lately) I scour flea markets and yard sales collecting old and eccentric objects. I have a barn in upstate New York full of my many years of lucky finds. They range from vintage thermoses to old plastic and wood children’s toys and oddly shaped metal containers. I’m really interested in objects with a past life because I love how their worn aesthetics tell a story and the objects I collect definitely influence and inspire my cookies. I constantly arrange and rearrange things in terms of color, shape, or function and if I ever decide to quit baking I may switch to buying and selling this stuff!
I recently wrote a book, You Can’t Judge a Cookie by Its Cutter, about using cookie cutters to cut out shapes and then decorating those shapes in new ways! For example, I turn a heart on its side and decorate it to look like a fish! Or turn a gift tag into a toaster. It is really a fun game and opens your eyes and mind to a whole new way of seeing shapes.
Different designs that use the same cookie cutter. (Photo Patti Paige)
What first got you interested in food and photography?
My grandmother’s cookies are pretty much my first memory of food. They were shaped cookies that she made with her cookie gun and brought with her every time she visited. I always thought about the shape of each cookie as I selected it and I can still remember my favorites even though they were all made from the same cream cheese/butter dough! When I began making my own cookies I combined my nostalgia for her baking, my art school background, and my love of making things to come up with Baked Ideas. I collect and love looking at picture dictionaries and word books, especially vintage ones, where each word is illustrated with a simple picture that defines it perfectly. These iconic images are what I think about when I design my cookies. I guess I love the ephemeral nature of food art. I’ve always used photography a way to record my work. In the case of my cookies, you make it, snap a picture — and then it’s gone in a couple of bites.
Saddle shoe cookies. (Photo: Patti Paige)
Where do you draw inspiration from when creating new cookies designs?
I draw inspiration from what’s around me and from experiences I’ve had. I often will get an idea and sit on it until I come up with just the right way to turn it into a cookie. The yoga cookies I make that are so insanely popular stayed in my head as an idea for over a year until I knew exactly how I wanted them to look! They are such a simple but universally understood image. After all these years, I haven’t gotten tired of seeing, making, or eating them! I also love creating cookies in images of unlikely objects that one might not imagine as cookies. I made an electrical outlet on a whim, a reminder to myself to “unplug.” Then there is a hairdryer, toaster, and even a Wusthof knife in honor of Chuck Williams. I included many of these out-of-the-ordinary cookie images in my book. I tend to get inspired as I go, so I often come up with my best ideas as a reaction to something else I am working on in the studio. I have a million ideas in my head, waiting to be cut out, baked, and decorated. I just need time!
Gingerbread yoga men. (Photo: Patti Paige)
Who are some of your favorite instagrammers?
I love SO MANY instagrammers! I appreciate how everyone’s feed reflects who they are and how they see things. Hard to chose but here are a few that come to mind…
@mollyyeh Her page is beautiful to look at. I love how it’s muted with occasional pops of color and the shots are from a variety of angles. It is simple, but never boring.
@dollyandoaatmeal I just started following her. Amazing photos that make me want to cook!
@cococakeland She has such a love for what she does and I love her styling and the “just cute enough” simple buttercream decorations on her cakes.
I need to start following some fellow junk collectors. too!
Breakfast toast cookies. (Photo: Patti Paige)
When did you first become interested in decorating cookies? Was it a skill that came naturally to you, or was it learned over time?
After art school I was painting and showing my work in galleries while baking cookies on the side to support myself. Without much effort at all, my cookie business grew and I was fielding orders from big clients, like Dean & Deluca and Bloomingdales. But being more of an artist/maker type than a classic baker at heart, I started baking and constructing gingerbread buildings just for fun. That led to custom cakes and eventually, cookie commissions and a spot in the premier issue of Martha Stewart Living. I learned everything I know about making and decorating cookies through trial and error. There were no videos or tutorials out there when I started doing this and books only showed the crudest of decorating styles. I am glad it worked out this way since it helped me to develop my own style without guidelines or rules. Right now my favorite part of the process is designing and making the cutters! It feels perfectly old school and all I need is some metal and pliers.
Cookie wedding favors made with royal icing and water color paint. (Photo: Patti Paige)
What do you enjoy about Instagram compared to other online communities?
Instagram is the first online community that I have really embraced. I love it. As a visual person it’s easier for me to use Instagram than twitter or other non photo based platforms. It comes naturally to me to share myself and respond to others through photos. With Instagram and I can have an idea, immediately get it out, and move on to the next one without over thinking. I have to control myself to not post too often!
What’s the best thing you’ve eaten recently?
Hard one! I am so insanely busy during this time of year that I barely have time to think about meals. A new Thai restaurant recently opened a couple of blocks from my studio and they specialize in larb. I had it for the first time and got totally addicted. It’s spicy and fresh and great with sticky rice. I was going there so often for a while that the guy warned me that they would be closed on Thanksgiving!
If you could throw a dream dinner party for any three people—living or dead—who would they be and what would you cook for them?
I can’t remember the last dinner party I hosted, so this really is a dream!!
I would love to entertain Charles and Ray Eames. I grew up with their furniture and inherited most of it so I still live with it every day. I love that clean modern style and like to think it has influenced my work.
Also my grandmother. My memories of her are all around food and her cookies had a huge impact on me. I have so many questions I want to ask her and I’d love to make her a meal.
I would make pasta with fried lemon, toasted walnuts and chile flakes (adapted from Melissa Clark.) For dessert, chocolate Eames Rocking Chair cookies to dunk in coffee (or in Nana’s case, tea).
West Elm chairs. (Photo: Patti Paige)
Any cookie decorating tips or tricks of the trade you could give readers?
The thing most beginners need to learn is to control the icing as it comes out of the pastry tube. What is crucial is the combination of how hard you squeeze the pastry bag and how fast you move your hand. Once you coordinate those two things and gain some confidence you are halfway there. Royal icing is way easier to control than people think! Cookie decorating involves a lot of trial and error, even for me. Some of my best ideas have resulted from “mistakes” and some of my favorite cookies were made by first timers. The most important thing is to not worry about everything being pristine and perfect, and to have fun.
And last but not least—what’s your favorite food (besides cookies of course)?
Homemade pizza on the grill or baking steel is my most recent favorite food. I love to experiment with new toppings.
Hungry emoji cookies. (Photo: Patti Paige)
For more drool-worthy Insta pics, visit our Instagram board on Pinterest and get to pinning!
Past guests from #TastyTakeovers:
New York takeover with Rachel Correra a.k.a @Rcorrera
Jackie Gebel behind @noleftovers
