Cake! magazine by Australian Cake Decorating Network August 2014 | Page 102

Julia Usher
interview with

I understand you used to bake a lot
with your mother, is this where your
love of decorated cookies came from?
Yes, my mom was a great home baker,
and I learned how to bake by riding her
apron strings at a very early age. She
turned me onto baking and cooking
in general, but she didn’t (and still
doesn’t) have the patience for doing
a lot of detailed, time-consuming
decorative work. That passion was
something I was born with, I think. As
far back as I can remember, I’ve always
loved fussing in the kitchen and going
the extra mile to make food not just
taste great, but also look pretty. As an
example, when I was 8 or 9 years old,
my mother taught me how to make
stollen. She dusted her hands clean
of flour and any further stollen work as
soon as the dough was filled and rolled.
But when her back was turned, I pulled
out some extra dough I had hidden
away, cut it into flowers and leaves, and
decorated the stollen top. The innate
decorator inside me was screaming,
“But you can’t leave it plain!”
How old were you when you decided
that decorating cookies was your
passion? Did you study anything to
help you in the cookie decorating field?

Looking at her meticulous comestible creations, you wouldn’t guess that Julia Usher actually
started out as a Mechanical Engineer, but it was her craving for cookies and all things
deliciously sweet that overtook her career setting her on a new found adventure.
Written by Marianna Saran
Julia now has a few books under
her belt including the recently
released Ultimate Cookies, along
with an amazing new cookie
decorating App. She also boasts
an amazing global following of
thousands of cookiers through her
online platform Cookie Connection,
a place where enthusiast can share
or pick up a tip or two.
Julia took some time out to answer
some curly questions and share her
cookie caper with us; here’s what
she had to say.

Tell us a little about yourself and
where you are from?
Ooh, this could be a long story, as my
background is quite varied and my
path to pastry was very circuitous. I
studied mechanical engineering at
Yale University, near my hometown of
Guilford, Connecticut, and then went on
to get graduate degrees in mechanical
engineering and business at the
University of California – Berkeley and
Stanford University, respectively. My
professional baking life began relatively
recently. Back in 1996 after brief jaunts
in culinary school and working on
the line in a restaurant, I opened my
bakery AzucArte, which specialized in
custom-designed wedding cakes. In
2006, I closed that bakery to focus on
food writing and styling and instruction
in the decorative sugar arts, which
is how I still earn my living today.

While I love decorating cookies and
have gotten some attention for my
cookie books and cookie work, I must
confess that cookie decorating isn’t
my sole passion. I consider myself first
and foremost a pastry chef and food
writer/stylist, with cookie decorating
being just one facet of what I like to
do. What really moves me is making

people’s eyes light up with the sight
or taste of a one-of-a-kind sweet, or
by showing them how to decorate
something (not necessarily cookies)
that they previously thought was out of
their reach.
That all said, I didn’t become a pastry
chef until I was in my mid-thirties, after
I went through a 10-month culinary
program in the Boston, Massachusetts
area. I initially thought I wanted to own
and operate a restaurant, but since
I had always had a pretty serious
sweet tooth, I decided to open a
bakery (AzucArte) instead. My forma