Decorating Your Cookies
Let’s be honest. A cookie is pretty delicious no matter if it’s decorated or not. This is why people tend not to bother with cookie decorating outside of the holidays. However, a decorated sugar cookie plate can be perfect for any sort of event, especially with the upcoming shower season. Impress everyone with your online pastry school skills at the events you attend, not only with how the cookies taste, but how they look as well. Here are some tips to decorate your cookies all year round:
Stock up on supplies
Having a handy cookie supply stock ready to go any time you feel like baking will make the process much quicker. Keep a box in your pantry filled with plenty of the following items so you can always decorate your cookies on a whim:
- Cookie cutters.
- Spatulas.
- Measuring cups.
- Food coloring.
- Icing bottles.
- Piping bags.
- Various icing tips.
- Toothpicks.
- Paint brushes.
Decorating ingredients
Now that you have all you need in order to decorate your cookies in every way imaginable, you’ll need the proper ingredients as well. Here is a recipe for a quick and simple decorating icing, but there are plenty of other ingredients you can incorporate into your cookie decorating as well:
- Chocolate chips.
- Jellybeans.
- Pretzels.
- Nuts.
- Sea salt.
- Malt balls.
- Cinnamon sugar.
- Mini marshmallows.
- And of course, as many sprinkles as you can possibly fathom: sanding sugar, cylinder sprinkles, chocolate, stars, rainbow, patriotic, nonpareils, pearls, etc. Science has proven that you actually cannot have too many sprinkles at your disposal at a given time.
You can put anything that your little heart desires on your cookies. This is especially fun for households with kids, as kids would love to decorate cookies for a reason besides Christmas. Incorporate some of their favorite candies and sweet treats.
Icing
Betty Crocker is a staple in the kitchen, so there’s no surprise she’d also know how to make a good icing. Our girl Betty’s recipe calls for:
- 3 cups of powdered sugar.
- 1/3 cup of softened butter or margarine.
- 1.5 tablespoons of vanilla extract.
- 1.5 tablespoons of milk.
This will give you enough icing to cover a sheet cake, so it should be more than enough for a batch of cookies. Divide the icing into individual bowls and add the appropriate food colorings.
The cookies themselves
Obviously, you need cookie dough for any of this information to be relevant to you. The best cookies to decorate are ones with smooth surfaces, rather than lumpy chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies. Opt for sugar, gingerbread or cinnamon spice. Cookies with dough that you roll out will be best, as they’ll be flat. If you don’t want to venture to make cookies and decorate them all in one sitting, you can make your dough up to a week ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. You can even make a big batch and freeze some of the dough for a couple of months until the next time you want to bake cookies.
