Here's an interesting use: at a Christmas fundraiser, I bid on and won a cookie jar filled with "Amish Sugar Cookies." They were round with the most interesting raised flower. Turns out, to make the flower, after rolling the dough in colored sugar, you press the end of a large plastic spool (the kind with a hole and "spokes") in the sugar and then lightly on the cookies, then bake them... they were delicious and pretty, too!