Odd-Shaped Cookie Cutters Spark Community and Creativity
A growing subreddit helps confounded users decipher the mystery cutouts, but not without some imaginative detours.
A growing subreddit helps confounded users decipher the mystery cutouts, but not without some imaginative detours.
The options are endless. (all screenshots Rhea Nayyar/Hyperallergic via r/WhatIsMyCookieCutter)
'Tis the season of over-the-top cookie decorating, and while shaped cookie cutters are normally sold in themed sets, many of them go astray and lose their context entirely. In a Reddit community devoted to figuring out what those unidentified cookie cutters might depict, many of its members are finding that the obscure outlines are the perfect tool to spark their imagination.
The subreddit, r/WhatIsMyCookieCutter, carved out its own community during the holiday season in 2022 after years of Reddit users flocking the r/baking forum to get help in figuring out what their rogue cookie cutters are supposed to be. The space started out as a fun guessing game to help solve years-long household mysteries born of many a Christmas past, but it turns out it's much more fun for people to propose the most absurd, niche, and outlandish possibilities, complete with accompanying digital drawings that fit those odd shapes.
Alligator flying out of an ice hole? Your guess is as good as mine ...
A shape as innocuous as the one pictured above yields myriad interpretations — a testament to the diversity of the human experience.
Actually, these guesses are all better than mine.
As it turns out, the cookie cutter was identified as the shape of Finland, but never let reality get in the way of your imagination.
The community has exploded over the last three years, with over 350,000 weekly visitors. It's also one of the more wholesome spaces on the website.
We're all thinking it ...
This one was never solved, but the user insisted on no NSFW ideas, so feast thine eyes on this array of family-friendly interpretations.
If you give a Redditor a cookie cutter ... Voila!
Some of the cookie cutter shapes become blindingly obvious once they're correctly identified, but one must ask why they exist in the first place. For example, this one illustrating a KitchenAid standing mixer:
I never would have guessed it, but now I can't unsee it.
But those ones only serve to fan the flames of web-based creativity ...
All worthy contenders!
Many tropes have come about in the community — cats in bizarre poses, weed paraphernalia, Halloween ghosts, the Saddam Hussein hiding place meme, and there's even one user who has become a meme in the subreddit because he interprets every shape as a rose. He's since been dubbed “rose guy,” and many users pay homage to him through their own posts.
A top post from the 2025 holiday season
Choose your fighter, cartoon mammal edition.
Sometimes, however, the cookie cutter shape is exactly what it is, and nothing else.
There really is something for everyone out there. What are the odds?
All of that is to say that the r/WhatIsMyCookieCutter community serves to remind us that there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see. It's a place to come together, have a laugh, and, for many who may not be art-aligned, a space to exercise the brain's creative side once again. Some users have said that this subreddit has been more helpful for inspiring daily drawing than other communities specifically for art.
Or perhaps, the whole endeavor shows us that maybe we shouldn't have done away with the Rorschach test after all. Happy holidays everyone, and may your iced cookies be as unique and creative as each of us.