Tips, recipe from Versailles baker on Food Network TV show, ‘Christmas Cookie Challenge’
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Versailles baker Lauren Jacobs thought that the phone call was a prank. Someone contacted her to talk about the cookies she displayed to thousands of online followers on social media as The Cheerful Baker.
“A talent scout contacted me, through Instagram, and I really did think it was a hoax,” said Jacobs, who has almost 49,000 followers on the social media platform. “It was just so completely out of the blue. And when you are a little home baker you don’t think it’s going to happen to you.”
Then the Kentucky baker got some very real forms to apply for the Food Network’s “Christmas Cookie Challenge.” And she was chosen from 40,000 applicants to be one of five bakers on the TV show, which airs Sunday, Dec. 11, at 8 p.m. ET, competing for $10,000.
Jacobs can’t say how she fared but she can say what her favorite part was: “I got to meet Ree Drummond and she’s as nice as she seems,” she said. The Pioneer Woman cook was one of the cookie judges, along with Eddie Jackson, a chef and former NFL player.
How The Cheerful Baker got started
Jacobs specializes in iced sugar cookies, the kind that look like tiny characters and might be too charming to eat.
But it wasn’t always that way. Her first cookies “were awful,” she said. “I knew how to bake a good cookie. But not how to decorate.”
She asked a fellow baker for advice, took an online class and practiced.
She found the process a therapeutic way to relax during a difficult time. Lauren is also the author of “The Boy Who Lost His Colors,” a children’s book about a mom who helps her child navigate school with a learning disability.
“One reason I started decorating cookies was it was a huge stress reliever, and it took me out of this sad experience, because when your child is sad, you’re sad,” she said. “I want people to know that when their child is struggling it can turn out OK.”
Cookie decorating is relaxing
At the time, she was working as an art teacher at the Lexington Latin School “and I discovered that all the items I used in non-edible art were available in edible form. It was fun to make something then eat it.”
She discovered that decorating cookies was the perfect mix of her talents and her passion.
“I never sit still … but for some reason I can sit and decorate a cookie for hours, I find it so relaxing. And the sky is the limit. Every cookie order is different and you can be creative. I’m drawn to the challenge,” she said. “They make people happy. I’m involved in the best times of people’s lives.”
Baby shower cookies are her favorite to make; funerals her least favorite.
How to order DIY cookie decorating kits
These days, she doesn’t make many individual cookie orders. Instead, she focuses on her subscription boxes, The Cheerful Box. She designs the cookies, makes the cutters and films videos explaining how to decorate each cookie.
“It’s like a cookie kit in a box, and we ship those out every month all over the country,” she said.
And she also teaches classes, including at Wildside Winery in Versailles. The next on is Dec 6, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
“It’s huge blessing, I get to do all the things that I love ... I love teaching people and still get to decorate the cookies because I do that for the classes,” Jacobs said.
Cookie decorating tips
The key to great iced cookies, she said: Mastering the consistency of royal icing.
“Once you can do that, you can do anything,” she said. “If it’s not thick enough, it will just fall over the side of the cookie and make a mess, if it’s too thin you won’t have that smooth finish.”
Even now things still go wrong with her cookies but it’s not the end of the world.
“If you mess up you still get to eat it.”
The Cheerful Baker’s Gingerbread Recipe
Makes approx 2 dozen cookies
Gingerbread Cookie Spice Mix
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons ground allspice
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoons ground nutmeg
Pinch of black pepper
Cookie Recipe
1 cup shortening (or 1 Crisco shortening stick)
1 cup white sugar
1 large egg
½ cup molasses
½ cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
4½ to 5 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons of spice mix
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Directions
Cream together shortening and sugar for 3-4 min
Add 1 egg and mix well
Add in molasses, maple syrup, white vinegar and vanilla
Mix until combined well.
Mix ½ of the flour, spice mix, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl using a wire whisk
Turn mixer on low and slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients until all is incorporated
Add remaining flour until the dough pulls away from the bowl.
Bake at 375 for 7-9 minutes or until slightly browned around the edges.
