Blog: Techniques

In Julia’s opinion, understanding techniques is the best way to advance one’s baking and design skills. Forget about replicating others’ sweets. Practice the foundational recipes and decorating techniques explained in this section of the blog, and you’ll soon find it easy to develop and hone your own personal style of sweets.

Julia M. Usher

Cast Sugar 101 – Part 2

In this second-part of my two-video Cast Sugar 101 series, I provide a few creative ways to repurpose leftover cast sugar from Part 1 (link below) into handmade sugar cubes. Once you’ve made your larger sugar pieces, no sugar needs to

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Julia M. Usher

Cast Sugar 101 – Part 1

In this first part of my two-video Cast Sugar 101 series, I show how to cast (aka mold) granulated sugar into a variety of shapes, which can then be used to create stunning cake separators, keepsake boxes and bottles, and other

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Julia M. Usher

How to Make Simple Wafer Paper Flowers

Wafer paper flowers have become all the rage in cake decorating. And it’s no surprise, really! Lightweight (lighter than gumpaste), delicate, and often quite easy to shape, they make gorgeous, life-like embellishments, wired and unwired on cakes – and even

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Julia M. Usher

Advanced 3-D Cookie Box Construction

Now that you’ve got basic 3-D cookie box construction down pat – assuming you looked at my earlier video ðŸ˜‰ – I’m upping the ante with a couple of slightly more advanced cookie box assembly techniques. In this video, I share all my

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Julia M. Usher

How to Assemble 3-D Cookie Boxes

Cookie boxes make great edible gifts – especially when filled with more cookies! In this video, I show how to assemble already decorated cookies into perfectly fitting 3-D boxes using the mitering technique. I also discuss how to apply decorative seams

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Julia M. Usher

How to Mold and Gild Cookie Dough

Not every cookie needs to be decorated with royal icing in order to stand out! In this video, I show how to emboss cookie dough using silicone molds to create very cool textured effects. I go further to gild them

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Julia M. Usher

How to Pipe a Royal Icing Needlepoint Pattern

Wondering how I piped the insanely detailed needlepoint patterns on my stuff-able stocking cookies posted recently for Christmas (video here)? Well, you’re in luck! In this video, I reveal all of the details needed for needlepoint icing work, including the

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Julia M. Usher

How to Dip and Decorate Contoured Cookies

In this video, I show how I decorated the surfaces of my 3-D Christmas globe ornaments (assembled in this earlier video), but the same techniques can apply to almost any rounded cookie shape. First, I explain the differences between dipping in

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Julia M. Usher

Edible Papers 101

Wafer paper . . . frosting sheets . . . edible images . . . yeah, the array of edible papers used for cookie and cake decorating can be mind-boggling! But stay tuned! In this video, I aim to demystify

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Julia M. Usher

How to Stencil Cookies with Royal Icing

Limited video release from my Ultimate Cookies Decorating Series on DVD! Because of the large quantity of requests I’ve received for basic cookie stenciling tips, I’ve released Lesson 10 (basic cookie stenciling) from my DVD series to YouTube for the world to

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Julia M. Usher

How to Contour Cookie Dough

Wondering how to create curvaceous pieces of cookie dough, like the half-circles used to create my cookie baskets in my Contoured Cookie Baskets video? Well, you’re in luck! In this video, I show you all the ins and outs of shaping

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Julia M. Usher

Dual-Mode Stenciling

What the heck is dual-mode stenciling, you ask?! (So sorry – it’s the former engineer in me who loves to make up pseudo-scientific names to explain cookie decorating techniques!) Anywho . . . it’s a term I coined (I think)

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Live sweetly, Julia