So anyway, back to Anne saving my blog— She sent me an email and was gracious enough to offer to share her fun new findings with my readers.  I was so happy and relieved that she could take the burden of my first post back.  Thank you Anne!  You truly saved my sanity and my blog.  I am honored to have you be my very first guest post ever. And so without further ado…. I give you Anne:

Hi, my name is Anne Yorks and I love decorating cookies. So much so, that I have a little cookie shop online called Flour Box Bakery. I do cookie stuff every day…and even if I’m not decorating, I’m still thinking about COOKIES!

But as much as I love to decorate, I hate to clean up icing bags. AND, I really don’t like mixing all those colors. It’s super time consuming. Thankfully, Karen has a solution to the messy piping bag problem. And, I think I have finally found a solution to making color mixing a little easier.

For a long time, I have used Wilton food colors. They are easily accessible and they have a nice selection of color choices. However, I have recently discovered the wonders of AmeriColor gel pastes. I think I will continue to use a few of my favorite Wilton colors, but I am starting to phase my stock to AmeriColor. Here’s why…no toothpicks! Just squeeze and voila! I don’t know that using a toothpick is so unbearable, but squeezing is just so much easier (for me). Plus, I like the quality of the AmeriColor gel pastes.

In order to take them for a test drive I made these…

A dozen flowers in TWELVE different shades of pink. For someone who does not enjoy mixing colors…this was actually a fun experiment. (By the way, I should mention these are chocolate roll-out cookies. I used the amazing and delicious recipe from Georganne of LilaLoa. It is the best. Ever!)

Here is my messy counter from mixing colors. I started with white royal icing (and it was 20-second consistency – an icing consistency I learned from Sugarbelle). I squeezed one little drop of pink food coloring into the white. I then made my first icing bag.

Then, I added a second drop of food coloring. I mixed it up and made my second shade of pink icing.

After that, I added a third drop of pink. I mixed it. I made my third bag of pink icing.

And so on until I had 12 shades of pink. Using the AmeriColor bottle made this process pain free.

The first pink was so pale it almost looked white.

But by the end…the pink was dramatic. I loved this little experiment and I was so thankful to have my AmeriColor gel paste to help me.

I should mention that I wrote this blog post on my own…without any prodding or bribing from Karen or AmeriColor. The opinions expressed here are mine and I think each cookie decorator does things a little differently. This is just my little experiment and my experience.

Happy decorating to you and I hope you’ll visit me next time on my blog at Flour Box Bakery online.

Thank you again Anne!! Your cookies are gorgeous! It makes me want to get in the kitchen and get baking. Hmmm…. I just may do that.