No frowns! We are all about smiles!"

I am standing in the test kitchen of Eat'n Park (in its Waterfront location in West Homestead next to corporate headquarters), apron on body, pastry bag in hand. Before me is a pad of Smiley Face cookie templates, a butcher block table the size of Rhode Island and four members of the Eat'n Park team -- corporate chefs John D. Frick and Regis M. Holden, marketing guru Kevin O'Connell and senior VP of food and beverage Brooks Broadhurst. I'm here to learn about the fine art of Smiley cookies, those incredible edibles that leave patrons grinning while gobbling.

I had never heard of the restaurant chain before I moved here, but now I eat there too often, taking too much off the salad bar, eating too much of their honey buns, eating too much of the panko-encrusted fish sandwiches. If I keep this up, I'm gonna end up needing a Lap-Band, yet somehow I don't think my editor will let me expense that.

First on the menu: practicing making the eyes, nose and wide-grinned smile for which the restaurant is famous. John offers a demo, carefully following the black lines until they are covered with bright green icing. I take the bag from his hand and give it a try. The eyes are off-centered blobs, the smile is crooked. "Good job!" he tells me, although the face I have created looks a bit like Barbra Streisand, assuming she were an alien on a really bad day. I try again, this time with purple icing. I start with the nose (to better center the eyes) then the smile. I feel like a child -- and I don't mean Julia -- playing with edible liquid crayons, my canvas being 4-inch, 270-calorie discs.

Now the real thing! John brings out a tray of freshly baked cookies. (The raw, pre-cut cookies arrive from the Eat'n Park bakery in the Robinson warehouse and are baked and given their colorful facials at each of the Tri-state area's 76 eateries.) On an average day, the restaurants sell at least 200 cookies; first rolled out in 1986, they were originally given to kids as a freebie before the restaurant also began selling them for 30 cents each and $2.99 a dozen Even the price of a smile goes up: The cookies now sell for 79 cents, $6.99 a dozen.

A short DVD teaches me there are two icing methods. With the dipping method, I carefully cradle the cookie and gently plunge it into the 3-gallon bucket of white icing. It's not as easy as it sounds. I have to hold the cookie without using the tips of my vinyl-glove covered fingers, but I can't seem to grasp the notion, and enough icing ends up on my fingers to feed a small nation for a week.

The buttering option works better. I dip a spatula into the pail, smear the icing, wipe off the excess and viola! a successful Smiley, although I am hardly as good (read: fast) as Patty Barone and Toni Kuzmirek, two Eat'n Park pros who can frost a cookie in 10 seconds or less.

I continue icing while feasting on some Eat'n Park facts, such as how several times a year restaurants will test-market new recipes. Two dishes being tested now are Pizza Burgers and Frisco Patty Melts.

But it's the cookies that continue to keep Eat'n Park patrons smiling. Frowns are frowned upon -- only smiles are allowed. (Customers can order, via the Web, specially colored Smileys.) Valentine's week is the biggest single Smiley week of the year, but the biggest selling cookie is the Halloween edition -- the orange pumpkins with candy corn eyes and noses even appeared in a movie, "R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It."

In 2006, the restaurant offered "American Idol" runner-up Katherine McPhee lots of dough ($100,000) and a lifetime supply of Smileys to make a commercial. She said no, the cookie crumbled and the job went to upcoming country crooner Sarah Marince. At least Ryan Seacrest gabbed about the cookies on E!

I digest it all, then ice a few more cookies. I make a few good ones, make a few more mistakes. The menu for success isn't so tough after all, and as I leave, John hands me a Smiley label pin representing I passed Smiley Cookie College.

He also hands me a package of 12 Smiley Cookies. I sit my car, open the plastic case and eat one. Then two. Then three. Then four. I begin to feel crummy, which in this case, is a very good thing.