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Our BIG Sugar Cookie Scented Candle Review, Page 3
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 Lisa's Introduction to the sugar cookie scents she reviewed:
When Christina asked me last fall if I'd like to do a big Sugar Cookie review with her, I was totally psyched! As she mentioned, I LOVE just about any bakery scent out there, so agreeing to do this was a no-brainer. In fact I couldn't wait to get started!
It's funny, but in spite of the fact that I'm hooked on sugar cookies in just about any form, before this review I hadn't burned a sugar cookie candle or tart in a long time. Sugar Cookie was one of the very first candle scents I ever burned (and no, I'm not mentioning how long ago that was!) But recently I've been into some of the more layered bakery blends like Orange Chiffon Cake or Cinnamon Biscotti, and Sugar Cookie kind of fell off my radar screen. So it was great to get reacquainted with an old favorite!
As my family and friends can testify, to the detriment of their waistlines and mine I love to bake cookies. During the late fall and holiday season I spend many weekends baking and freezing cookies to give as holiday gifts. So I knew right off what I would be looking for in  the perfect sugar cookie scent...a warm balance of hot, fresh-baked dough and sweet sugary vanilla notes, with a dollop of butter mixed in and a slight hint of spices. A thick layer of frosting, perhaps topped with sprinkles or colored sugar crystals, would be optional but totally welcome. Aside from an all-expenses paid trip to Tahiti in January, there are few things in life that can top sinking your teeth into a sweet sugar cookie still warm from the oven and smelling that great vanilla-laden scent. (Uh oh...now I'm all hungry... there goes the post-holiday diet!)
Anyway, that's my interpretation of a great sugar cookie aroma. But since everyone's different, and there are so many companies that carry this scent, when I tested my tarts and candles I tried to keep an open mind as to each company's interpretation of the fragrance. And I have to say up front that although every one was different, there wasn't one version of Sugar Cookie that I disliked. So... many kudos to the companies for their great craftsmanship, and an extra big thank you and a hug to Christina for inviting me to do this review with her - it was so much fun!!
So... here are my takes on each version I tested. |
 Sugar Cookie from Full Moon Candle Company
Christina has reviewed this company in the past, so if you need the full skinny on this vendor, check out her review. Suffice it to say that Full Moon concentrates on a select number of scents and candle types in order to provide the very best quality of each, and has a very attractive and easy-to-use website. In addition to their website and studio, they have retail stores located in Sequim, Washington and Brisbee, Arizona. They pretty much stick to scented pillars and clamshell melts for their wax products (on a side note, Sugar Cookie is available in melt form, but not in pillars).
Full Moon sent me two packages of clamshells to review. I only needed two cubes (for the uninitiated, this is the equivalent of one standard tart) to make up my mind about this vendor, though...WOW! I was in love with this scent! Full Moon's Sugar Cookie is hands-down, no question, one of the most authentic Sugar Cookie scents I have ever smelled in wax. And that includes Yankee Candles' various versions, and they're very authentic. Full Moon has totally nailed this scent.
These tarts threw really well - I melted them in the master bedroom and the scent filled all of upstairs and most of the first floor as well. But what I really liked about this scent was that it was never nauseatingly strong. It just smelled really good in my house! The presentation of these tarts was also very cool. Normally clamshell tarts are pretty utilitarian, but Full Moon jazzed em up with a liberal dusting of cinnamon and spices across the top. I loved it! The wax was a light buttery yellow color in keeping with the cookie scent.
Visit Full Moon Candles |
 Vanilla Sugar Cookie from PineRidge Scents (aka Fresh Baked Refills)
OK, so I began my review of PineRidge Scents' version of Sugar Cookie with a soft spot in my heart for this company. PineRidge is located in Livermore, Maine, which is at the edge of the western Maine mountains and pure Stephen King country; my family on my father's side was originally from that neck of the woods, and we've vacationed up there since forever. Anyway, despite my fondness for the area, when it comes to good wax I have very high (some say persnickety) standards, so in the end it didn't matter where PineRidge was located.
PineRidge has a smallish scent selection but a full menu of container candles, shaped  candles, melts and other wax goodies - and best of all, they offer candle refills! As with Full Moon, I only tested tarts from this company - a standard-sized/shaped "primitive grubby" tart and four cookie-shaped tarts (very cute). Allicca, Pine Ridge's owner, included a note with my tarts indicating that one and a half of the cookie-shaped tarts were equivalent to one standard tart. (I don't know about you, but I really enjoy it when vendors tuck a hand-written note in with their goodies...that little personal touch is so nice in a world where we normally deal with faceless big-box companies and outsourced customer service. But I digress...)
PineRidge's Sugar Cookie scent is actually called Vanilla Cookie, and to my nose it was a definite winner. Not as authentic, perhaps, as some of the other versions I tested, but absolutely delicious nonetheless. To me this was a refrigerated slice-and-bake sugar cookie rather than homemade-from-scratch - sweet rather than doughy. This scent was rich to the point of being almost cake-like; cold, it had strong brown sugar and butter notes, and hot it smelled like a warm cookie heavily iced with buttercream frosting. I wanted to bite the tart! The throw was not as robust as some of the others I tested - it's a room-filler rather than a floor or a house-filler - so if you like your scents on the lighter side or have a smaller area to scent, this is the pick for you.
Visit PineRidge Scents |
 Sugar Cookie from Castine Candle Company
I was happy to have the opportunity to try another Maine company for this review - this one is from Benton, a small town in mid-Maine a bit nearer to the seacoast. Castine Candle is currently under new ownership and is going through a major revamping of their product lines and website. I was not familiar with the company before this review, so I have no idea how the website looked before, but I can say that I fell in love with the updated rendering at first sight. It's gorgeous, very easy to use, and looks both very professional and warm and welcoming at the same time.
Castine's Sugar Cookie scent was radically different from any of the others I tested. I liked it for just that reason - it was a pleasant change of pace. Rather than a buttery  bakery type, this scent is pure sugar. In fact, it reminded me of an old Colonial Candle scent, now discontinued, from a few years back - I think it was called White Sugar Crystals or something similar. The scent is very light and sweet, with only the barest of vanilla and butter notes in the background, and no bakery or brown sugar notes at all that I could detect. Because the scent is so subtle, there wasn't much throw at all to these candles - the best I could get was scenting half of the powder room. So if your preference is for knock-em-dead heavy bakery whiffs, this version might not be for you. Personally, I really would have preferred more scent to these candles, and would probably burn them during the warm spring and summer months when I tend to go for both candles and fragrances that are a little lighter.
Castine carries a full range of products except for melts, and for the review I tested an 18 oz double wicked apothecary jar (with flat glass lid), an 8 oz travel tin, and a 3x9 pillar. I LOVED the presentation of these candles! They are elegant yet simple enough to fit in with any décor, be it urban/modern or country/primitive. The wax was a milky white with a slight sheen to it - beautiful! All burned slowly which is a plus in my book, even the double wicked one, and looked absolutely gorgeous when lit. Surprisingly, the candle with the best throw to it was the smallest - the travel tin.
Visit Castine Candle Co |
 Sugar Cookie from Allison's Candle Corner
Allison's Candle Corner was a brand new company for me, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I really liked their site - it has a very clean and straightforward interface - and old-school New Englander that I am, I was really tickled by their location: Spudnut Center, Magnolia, Arkansas. Is there a more perfect address for a candle company? Anyway, Allison's has oodles of scents to choose from (categorized by fragrance type to make it easy to find what you're looking for), and carries jar candles, tins, pie-shaped candles and scented oils for your sniffing  pleasure. Oh, and to top it off, great vendor communication too!
For this review Allison sent me a big 24 ounce jar candle to test. This jar is huge - I still haven't finished burning it - and it's double-wicked. The wax is a creamy light brown color, the exact shade of cookie dough with lots of brown sugar in it. The candle burned incredibly well with no drowning wicks, smoking, flare-ups, or wax left on the sides of the jar. The jar itself was quite pretty too: barrel shaped with a decorative edge around the top. Scent description:
"Like your mom's cookies with sugar crystals backed on top."
I thoroughly enjoyed Allison's version of Sugar Cookie. Now to my nose, at least, this scent wasn't super complex and it didn't scream "cookies baking here" like some of the others I tested. It was more like your standard vanilla or maybe vanilla custard fragrance, without a ton of dough or icing notes. However, it scented my entire powder room easily and was one of the cleanest-burning candles I've ever had. Despite the lack of complexity to this scent I was totally happy with my Sugar Cookie candle from Allison's, and would have no problem buying another one or trying one of her other scents.
Visit Allison's Candle Corner |
 Sugar Cookie from Friendly Fumes
Even though they've been around since 2000, I had never heard of this company until I tested their Sugar Cookie candle. But believe me, this is one vendor that I definitely MUST go back to and try more. To begin with, Friendly Fumes' customer service and communication are marvelous! I love companies that treat you like a welcome friend or guest, rather than just another faceless order (or worse, an annoying distraction to their very busy lives). The owners, Bob and Sue, are really sweet and go out of their way to be helpful. They even threw in a delicious-smelling bar of their handmade soap along with the candle, which was of course right up my alley, since my bath and body product addiction rivals my candle  addiction!
Located in Green Lane, Pennsylvania, Friendly Fumes has a ton of different candle types - jars, pillars, votives, tealights, you name it - and a very lengthy and well-rounded scent list. They've also got a full line of bath and body products for women and men in addition to the handmade soaps and sell fragrance and essential oils to boot. I love their site and could spend hours drooling and deciding what to buy.
The Sugar Cookie candle that I tested was a 10 oz apothecary jar with black handled lid and bright white 100% soy wax. It had two wicks, burned perfectly, and the scent - OMG, as my daughter would say. It was absolutely scrumptious!! Of all the candles and melts I tested, this one was the most like a cookie without frosting - it was a true, rich cookie dough with a hint of spices that's been baked until it's just crisp. Yum! I really loved the bakery notes to this one; they were sweet and authentic without being cloying. Friendly Fumes has captured this scent perfectly. And to put icing on the cookie, so to speak, the candle threw like crazy - it filled my powder room as well as the hallway, the computer room and much of the living room as well. And after I blew it out it lingered for almost an hour - how great is that?!
Visit Friendly Fumes |
 Sugar Cookie from Kat's Soy Kandles
Kat's Soy Kandles is relatively new company to the world of wax (it began in 2006) and it was definitely a new experience for me. Kat, the owner, maintains both a standard website and a site on Etsy as well, she offers a bunch of different wax products like jar candles, melts, cinnamon buns, coffee mug candles, as well as gift baskets, wax bears and party favors. For this review I received a small jar candle with a gold lid and several one ounce standard tarts - and as the name implies, these were all soy wax that was a creamy tan color. I thought the labels, packaging and overall presentation were cute and well-designed, and quite professional-looking. I was very anxious to give these a go on first sniff out of the box.
These tarts smelled really good cold - a true buttery/sweet aroma with just a touch of frosting. (I wish I had a proper scent description for you, but unfortunately, I couldn't find any on the website.) But with tarts, the proof is in the melting, and unfortunately when hot, this version of Sugar Cookie lost much of its complexity and became your basic vanilla scent. Not bad, mind you - in fact, vanilla is one of my favorite scents - but still not the authentic cookie fragrance that I was looking for. In its favor, the tart was fairly strong and threw well - it filled the master bedroom and started to drift down the stairs - and lasted a good nine hours or so. The upshot? I thought this was a decent, workaday vanilla fragrance; nice, but not overwhelmingly fabulous. The candle, however, was another matter - unfortunately, the cold smell was very light, and hot, the throw was almost non-existent. I had to stand over the candle waving my hands frantically in order to pick up any fragrance at all, and it tunneled as well - a rather disappointing performance.
Even though Kat's Soy Kandles' version of Sugar Cookie just didn't do it for me, and I wasn't nuts about the candle... I have to remember this was just one scent from this company that I tested. There may be others that they offer that are just spectacular.
Visit Kat's Soy Kandles |
 Frosted Sugar Cookie from Crosscreek Country Candles
Drum roll, please... because I saved my absolute favorite, all-time champion, number one Sugar Cookie scent for last!
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I first learned about Crosscreek Country Candles a couple of years ago when Christina reviewed them for Candlefind. I tried them on the strength of her review, and have been hooked on Crosscreek ever since. The owner, Deana, is one of the nicest people I've ever met and provides unbelievably great (and fast!) customer service. In addition to linen sprays Crosscreek only carries wax tarts, but offers them in a huge array of different types, sizes and shapes, so there's something for everyone, and the scent list has more than 400 choices to pick from. The website is beautiful and so easy to use, too.
But even though I'm quite familiar with this company, I had never tried Crosscreek's Frosted Sugar Cookie scent before. I approached it with an open mind, since as can be expected with more than 400 fragrances, there is bound to be something that I'm not wild about, and Sugar Cookie can b e tricky sometimes. This was the last Sugar Cookie type that I tested, and I was interested to see how it would stack up against my other vendors'. Deana sent me a bunch of standard 1 ounce tarts, which I promptly popped into my designated "sugar cookie review" melter in the master bedroom. Here is the scent description straight from Crosscreek's site:
"A golden sugar cookie frosted with icing and garnished with sprinkles."
The only way to describe this one is... fabulous! This is the ultimate authentic sugar cookie aroma - delicious, sweet, buttery icing on top, layered with middle and bottom notes of lightly spiced dough and rich vanilla. On cold sniff, and as it's first melting, the frosting notes come on strong, and then the bakery notes develop and blossom as time goes on. The fragrance also is layered in the throw - the closer you are to the tart burner, the stronger the frosting scent is; the farther away, the more you smell the cookie dough part. I loved the complexity that I found in Crosscreek's version of this normally straightforward scent. And speaking of throws, the one for Frosted Sugar Cookie is incredible and lasts more than 12 hours. One tart scented not only the master bedroom but the whole upstairs floor, then wafted downstairs to the living room, kitchen and even to the basement. So five gold stars to Crosscreek for Frosted Sugar Cookie - it just doesn't get any better than this!
Visit Crosscreek Country Candles |
Conclusion to our BIG Sugar Cookie review:
Lisa's thoughts
This review was so much fun to do that I hated to see it come to an end... and believe it or not I'm still not sick of Sugar Cookies! I feel lucky to have sampled some vendors that were brand new to me as well as some old favorites, and it has definitely inspired me to plot a couple of orders. (Though I wonder how lucky my husband will feel when the candle  bills arrive...)
To sum up my experience, I would have to say that my supreme favorite Sugar Cookie version was in the tarts from Crosscreek Country Candles. That one really was the complete package...a lovely aroma of freshly-baked cookies with loads of icing, all wrapped up in a fabulous and long-lasting throw. And in jar candles, Friendly Fumes definitely takes the cake (or the cookie!) I just fell in love with their version of Sugar Cookie in candle format - what a great bakery scent and a beautiful candle!
That's not to disregard the others, though - far from it! I thought every one had something different and good to offer. Full Moon's Sugar Cookie was excellent and very close to Crosscreek's, albeit with a slightly smaller throw and longevity. If you like your Sugar Cookie to be rich, warm, comforting and well-performing but not too overpowering, definitely give PineRidge Scents or Allison's Candle Corner a try - I loved them. And for an entirely different type of Sugar Cookie, as well as an outstandingly gorgeous presentation, look to downeast Maine for Castine Candle Company.
Happy Sugar Cookie sniffing... and baking!
~ Lisa
 Christina's thoughts
Boy, you'd think after burning and melting 14 different sugar cookie scents, I'd be ready to throw myself off the nearest cliff... but surprisingly, I'm not. I really had a good time working on this review and enjoyed many of the scents I sampled. I also spaced out this review over a few weeks so I didn't inundate myself to the point of nasal suicide! It worked and I think this is how I'll structure all future comparison reviews I do.
Reviewing the same scent from 14 different companies was interesting because every scent was so different (which is good)... if everything smelled the same, think how boring that would be? I definitely found some sugar cookie scents that stood out. By far, Soy Lovely was my favorite of all the scents I tried... I liked it so much, I already ordered more before I even completed this review. Their sugar cookie scent was so creamy, rich and full of doughy goodness, if this isn't how a sugar cookie smells, it should be, I hereby declare it!!
Pine Point, LOL and Blue Moon tie it for second with Sugar & Spice trailing by a fraction... all were different and unique and should have their own platform... I found Pine Point's sugar cookie to be a wonderfully rich vanilla cookie fragrance that I enjoyed from beginning to end. LOL was a doughy and sweet vanilla that I really enjoyed and one I'll definitely be purchasing again with my next order.... Blue Moon was another unique and rich cookie scent that I enjoyed from start to finish. And Sugar & Spice's unique sugar cookie rocked!! My only wish is that it would have been stronger. I could baste myself in that scent! Spotted Hog was another great vanilla cookie as well but I found it to be more of a deep and rich vanilla rather than a cookie scent. Can't forget Busy Bee which has a great and sweet doughy version much like LOL's. You couldn't go wrong ordering from this company as well.
Angie's Country Candles, Nene's Kitchen Melts & Gold Canyon Candles were great vanilla cookie scents too but I felt they lacked elements important to me in a sugar cookie fragrance... namely that rich and buttery dough smell. When I order a sugar cookie scent, that's what I'm after. Now you on the other hand may not like rich and buttery dough (our tastes are all so different) so by all means, try any of the above companies I reviewed... all are great for different reasons. Every company I reviewed are worthy of shopping on and are each famous for different scents.
My goal with this review wasn't to critique the companies themselves but the specific sugar cookie scent they each carry. I wanted to find my perfect sugar cookie and I definitely did that.
I hope this review may help you find yours. ;-)
~ Christina
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Previous pageGo to beginning of our BIG Sugar Cookie reviewTable of contents for this review with links to each candle company
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