Chef Nicholas got back Tuesday after judging the National Gingerbread Competition held at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. This was the 22nd year of the competition and Chef Nicholas tenth year as judge. Prior to his tenure as judge for the National Gingerbread Competition, Chef Nicholas judges two Food Network Challenge episodes shot at the resort: "Gingerbread Mansions "and "Gingerbread Champions." This week, you are lucky enough to hear about the competition and judging process straight from the judges mouth! Chef Nicholas himself wrote this week's blog! Enjoy!

Oh, and be sure to read all about our fabulous upcoming holiday sales at the end of this blog!

ISAC's Grand Holiday Open House

Thank you, thank you, thank you to EVERYONE who attended our Grand Holiday Open House this past weekend! It was, as always, so nice to see our old friends and even nicer to meet so many new ones! We hope that everyone had as much fun as we did!  I was going to write a loooooong blog describing the event, but I thought it might be fun to do a photo-blog. So, scroll down and enjoy! (Make sure you go all the way to the bottom, that's where I share the winners of the ballot drawaing and our First Annual Snow Globe Competition!).

International Sugar Art Collection Field Trip!

Last Thursday, Scott, Gretchen, Molly, and I got to go on a fun little field trip! We took part in the Taste of Home Cooking School event in Atlanta. Taste of Home is a cooking and lifestyle magazine, and they host cooking school recipe demonstrations all over the country. It was a lot of fun and we met some wonderful new people!

We had a great booth in the vendor section. We raffled off a seat in Chef Nicholas' Gumpaste for the Holidays class, told everyone about our First Annual Edible Snow Globe contest, donated two gift baskets for the Taste of Home drawing, and we debuted a brand new product!

Nicholas Lodge's 2015 Class Schedule

Last week, at the end of my blog, I casually mentioned our new 2015 class schedule was available on our website. Let's talk about that, shall we?

Nicholas Lodge's International Sugar Art Collection's

First Annual Edible Snow Globe Competition

Christmas will, of course, still be in December, but we here at ISAC are pretending it's coming early because we are excited to share our upcoming Snow Globe Competition with all of you! So excited in fact that we have already been making our own Snow Globes to share with you and to give you inspiration! First, let's talk a little bit about Edible Snow Globes!

Pastry Live Atlanta 2014!

Tuesday was the final day of Pastry Live 2014! It was a big weekend for the ISAC team, and we were VERY involved; we had a vendor booth, Chef Nicholas judged two competitions (Art of Cake Competition, and the National Showpiece Championship), The Art of Cake Seminar, sponsored by Nielsen-Massey Vanilla and hosted by Chef Nicholas, AND we were one of the event sponsors! I would argue while Nicholas had more important jobs, mine was more fun. Walk around soaking in the sweetly scented air, have fun, meet people, and gain inspiration for writing this very blog! My job is hard, but it's all for you dear readers- no pain no, gain!

Nicholas Lodge's Newest Book!

I am so excited to share some wonderful news with our wonderful readers! This past weekend, at the 39th annual ICES convention in New Mexico, Chef Nicholas released his brand new book, New Trends in Sugar Flowers. This is the second book of a trilogy; the first, Potpourri of Flowers, was first published in 1999 and re-released in 2013. 

Goodbye June. Hello July!

Boy oh boy, June was such a busy month for us here at ISAC! We had five different classes- New Trends in Gumpaste Flowers, Summer Gumpaste Flowers, 2-Day Ultimate Rose, Modern Marie Antoinette (with Chef Nicholas and Chef Lauren Kitchens), and Grand Master of the Jedi Order: Yoda with Lauren Kitchens! It was fun having all those classes, catching up with returning students, meeting new students, and having Chef Lauren was such a treat! Chef Nicholas, ever the dedicated teacher, hopped a plane to Japan last Wednesday so that he can teach at our sister school: Nicholas Lodge Sugar Art Gallery Japan. He will be teaching there for a total of two weeks. If you are one of our blog readers in Japan- I hope you are having fun with Chef Nicholas! We miss him here in the USA!

Nicholas Lodge and the

International Sugar Art Collection have a new blog!

Welcome to our blog! We here at Nicholas Lodge's International Sugar Art Collection (ISAC) are very excited to be connecting with our students, customers, and fans in this fun and informative way! Our goal is to share new and exciting products, tried and true products, quick demonstration videos, discuss upcoming events and classes, and maybe even some fun giveaways and contests for our readers. 

We are happy to announce the new blog for The International Sugar Arts!