AUSTRALIAN woman Lauren Farrell, 29, started decorating cookies four years ago as a hobby and after joining a book club, decided to treat her fellow members to her baked goods.

The admin officer from Melbourne has mastered the art of carefully decorating cookies to look exactly like the covers of books read by the book club. She said: “My hobby started with wanting to make iced smiley face cookies. I did some research online, found decorated cookies using royal icing and since then, I’ve been hooked!”

“Since I joined the book club three years ago, I have baked something to bring in every month. I then made the 12 books we read in 2019 for our final book club last year,” she said. “Since then, I’ve made book cookies quite a few times, most recently the book club books of 2020. Members of the book club do enjoy my cookies! I make sure they all get taken home and they’re usually eaten.”

Armed with a piping bag, Lauren decorates her freshly baked cookies with homemade colored royal icing with an edible marker on stand by for tiny intricate details.

She decorates the cookies layer by layer and uses a dehydrator to dry the icing in between each layer. Lauren added: “I do find the decorating calming. It’s also a chance to be creative. I sometimes brush some icing on to get some texture, like you can see on ‘The White Girl’ book cookie.”

“My favorite book is ‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara, but I haven’t made a cookie version of that one yet,” said Lauren.

The book cookies have gone down a storm with not only Lauren’s book club, but also with the author. After seeing Lauren’s biscuit version of the cover of his book “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing,” author Hank Green tweeted a photo of the cookie, saying “SO DELICIOUS.”

Author Adam Kay tweeted, “This is AMAZING!” after seeing Lauren’s cookie adaptations of his books. Author Trent Dalton shared an image of Lauren’s cookie that she decorated to look like his book “All Our Shimmering Skies” with the caption “delicious and thought-provoking.” Lauren said: “It is nice hearing the authors do like my book cookie! A few of them have replied to my photos of the covers and seem to think they’re cool.”

(SD-Agencies)