My Cookie Cutter Collection
MY COOKIE CUTTER COLLECTION
There is a certain nostalgic, cozy feeling about cookie cutters. Most of our mothers had a small collection of aluminum cookie cutters in their kitchen drawers. My mother certainly did have a few. On holidays, especially Christmas, we would roll out sugar cookie dough into various shapes and then decorate the cookies with icing and sugar sprinkles. I did the same with my three daughters. These are fun memories. Later it became easier to make drop cookies like chocolate chip, peanut butter, and coconut macaroons, but we never let go of our cookie cutters.
A cookie cutter collection is a great fun beginner collection because there are so many available and usually at a great price. I love to go antiquing. Just looking is fun but finding a few little treasures is even more fun. Over the years I guess I have had a lot of fun because my collection is large and many duplicates have been shared with my daughters who all have collections of their own now.
Most of the cookie cutters I have collected date from the 1930s to the 1960s. The oldest and most collectible have wooden or metal handles painted either red or green. My mother had a biscuit cutter and a chicken cookie cutter with green handles. I found three old bottles of cookie sprinkles in the back of my mother’s spice cabinet and these were added to my collection. Her red handled rolling pin, measuring cups, and measuring spoons are also part of my collection. One of my girlhood favorite cookie cutters was a Girl Scout Trefoil cutter that was a give-away with Drip-O-Lator coffee makers. Mother’s few other cutters have just blended into my own collection.
When my own three daughters were children we had fun rolling, cutting, baking, and decorating Christmas cookies and the tradition has been passed on down to our grandchildren.
I enjoy having my cookie cutters on display in glass jars as part of my kitchen décor.
My oldest red and green handled cookie cutters. The green handled chicken and biscuit cutters belonged to my mother.
The Betty Crocker Cooky Book was published in 1963 and has been reproduced in recent years. I have both a reproduction (which I bought first) and later I found a first edition, first printing vintage copy. The rolling pin and green handled chicken cutter were my mothers ... I had a pink recipe box in the 1950s like the one in the photo.
Vintage biscuit cutters ... at the top a very old collected cutter. The green handled cutter belonged to my mother and the other small cutter is my biscuit cutter that I have had for years. My mother and I both preferred to make small biscuits.
A collection of old cutters of various shapes. I collected these one at a time. I especially like the shortbread cutter.
My heart cookie cutters ... also collected one at a time (that's the fun part!)
Card suits cutters ... the spades and clubs are harder to find. These were popular for Bridge parties either for cookies or for tea sandwiches.
Animal cookie cutters are fun to find. One that I still want is the fish ... it is a big one like the bird ... and maybe the horse cookie cutter too.
The circle cutters are great for sandwiches or sugar cookies and the larger tea cake cookies. My father told me one of his fondest memories was of his mother's tea cakes and that my sugar cookies tasted most like them that he had tasted since.
This is my sugar cookie recipe. In the late 1950s I did baby sitting for our preacher's family who were good friends of my parents. Occasionally homemade sugar cookies were left as a treat for the children and me. My original copy of this recipe went into my pink recipe box in the late 1950s.
There are cookie cutters for every holiday ... Valentines' Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Christmas is my favorite ... so much room for creative decorating with children.
Old jars of sugar cookie sprinkles found at the back of my mother's spice cabinet. I am sure I decorated cookies with them in my childhood but I wouldn't use them now. They make cute décor now displayed near my cookie cutter collection.
One of my jars of collected cookie cutters ... kitchen art to me and I love to see them everyday.
Once I found this unopened card of two Christmas cutters at the Goodwill for a quarter.
On the back of the card was a good recipe.
All-Season Cookies booklet from the test kitchens of the Mirro Aluminum Company, maker of most of the cookie cutters
My Girl Scout cookie cutter ... 1953 or 1954
Three piece Calumet cookie cutters I recently collected ... I have several Calumet Baking Powder recipe booklets in my collection. My maternal grandmother's and my mother's sugar cookie recipe cards say "Calumet Sugar Cookies."
The three Calumet cookie cutters ... large cutter is a pastry cutter, the middle cutter is a cookie cutter, and the small cutter says biscuit cutter.
My own cookie making equipment ... 1964 edition of the famous red and white checked Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, sifter, rolling pin and cookie and biscuit cutters. These have been mine for more than fifty years ... hard to think of my own things being VINTAGE!
Collections displayed in my kitchen
Set of graduated maple leaf cutters ... cookies or pie crust decoration ... from Williams-Sonoma
Set of small pie crust cutters
Bird House cookie cutter and recipe card ... Bark and Bradley 1995 Purple Puma collection
Purple Puma Company Pumpkin Pie spices and pie crust cutter ... 1994 Bark and Bradley
Teapot spices and cookie cutters ... Purple Puma collection
Pampered Chef heart cookie press
Three very large Wilton copper cookie cutters ... great for fall cookies
