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Pride and Prejudice - Puffin Plated Edition - SweetAmbs

Pride and Prejudice – Puffin Plated Edition

This has to be one of the coolest projects I’ve ever had the honor of working on! Penguin Random House hired me last winter to create the cookies that adorn this edition of Pride and Prejudice from their Puffin Plated Series. In addition to being beautifully photographed by Bill Milne, the book contains recipes from Martha Stewart including rosemary pound cakes, cream scones with currants, and fruit turnovers just to name a few.

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If you decorate cookies (or even if you don’t!), I’m sure you can imagine that making all of these designs was quite the feat! So much planning went into it on the part of the publisher, and while I had plenty of time to plan my cookie designs and sketch them out, the actual baking and decorating was finished within a few weeks, including some evenings and weekends (which, I’m happy to say, is pretty rare for me!).

Kristie Radwilowicz, senior designer at Penguin Young Readers, made the process so much easier on me by knowing exactly what she wanted and designing every aspect of the cover from the cameos down to the piped lettering. I filmed a time-lapse video of me decorating the cover (apparently surrounded by an explosion of decorating supplies):

To do this, I printed out Kristie’s design on paper and used the royal icing transfer method to pipe the lettering on parchment paper. When the letters were dry, I carefully moved each piece onto an 8×11″ piece of fondant then added the brush embroidered edge. The brush embroidered flowers, piped roses, cameos, and gold frames were done separately so that they could be resized as needed to fit the page. Here are the components of the cover.

In addition to 80+ cookies, I also piped a whole lot of royal icing flowers that are scattered throughout the book. 

The photo shoot took place at Bill Milne’s studio in New York City. Thank goodness my brother was available to go with me that day! Not only does the thought of driving in the city majorly stress me out (especially with a car full of these delicate components!), but I was also sick with a cold and completely dazed from cold medicine. He was a huge help. Thanks, Emmet!

While we were in the studio, I had the pleasure of meeting food artist Tisha Cherry who was prepping for her shoot the following day for Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (decorated in food, of course!)

Working on this book was such an incredible experience and I’m so happy that the team at Penguin invited me to be a part of it!

Get your copy of Puffin Plated’s Pride and Prejudice here!

Amber Spiegel, founder of SweetAmbs, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the author of Cookie Art: Sweet Designs for Special Occasions. Amber has over 12 years of cookie decorating experience and has traveled the world teaching others how to decorate beautiful cookies on their own.

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