Decorating Cookies

Cookies and decorations.

Holiday tunes on the stereo, fresh pot of coffee on the stove, cookies baked, icing made and friends and family gathered to decorate our batch of 67!

Wether you’ll be decorating cookies with a gang or enjoying the activity as a solo pursuit, we recommend taking the time to separate the baking session from the decorating session. It goes a long way toward easing stress and allows for a complete kitchen clean up as you change activities. Making time and space to decorate cookies has become a tradition around here. Most friends and family members don’t really want to be involved in the baking when it comes right down to it. Besides, most cookie recipes that call for cookie cutters require extensive down time for thoroughly chilling the dough.

Take your time and set the stage for success. When you limit the color palette you ensure that even the cookies decorated by the least experienced hands will end up looking like they match. This year we experimented with two consistencies of each color. It was a lot to manage. Next year, we’re planning to try just two colors. We love the looks created with a pastel pink or blue and white, like the Valentine’s Day Gingerbread heart below. Even just white can be used to great effect as pictured in the snowflake Gingerbread collie below. (Both of these were contributed by the lovely Eve Ross.)

Perfect Gingerbreads.

Click to link to Royal Icing recipe.