Tip of the Day: Decorate Cookies for a Fun and Tasty Treat

Nov. 24, 2010 — -- It's the perfect year to start a holiday tradition with your family!One of the most popular is baking holiday cookies together

Online Answer:

Prepwork

Some decorations can be put on cookies before they even bake. Some things that you can place on your cookies before baking are:

• colored sugars
• festive sprinkles
• raisins and dried fruits such as cranberries
• nuts

Paint

Try painting your cookies before baking them. Combine an egg and a few drops of your food coloring in your favorite color and stir. Then use a regular paintbrush and put into the oven.

After bakingIt is usually more common to decorate cookies after baking and that is done mostly with frosting, icing, or melted chocolate.

Frosting vs. Icing

Surprisingly, frosting and icing are very different. Frosting is thicker and holds shapes it shape which is why is used on the edge of a lot of cakes. The creamy buttery flavor is what makes most people think frosting takes better, plus it's still soft. Icing is a thinner and more of a liquid than creamy frosting. But, it becomes very smooth across a cookie when it dries and hardens. This is the icing most often used on holiday sugar cookies.

Frosting

There are two ways to use frosting on your cookies. The first is by using a butter knife or rubber spatula to spread it across the cookie. Another way is to place the frosting in a pastry bag and pipe the icing onto the cookie. If you don't have a pastry bag, you can also fill a plastic sandwich bag with frosting and clip the corner with scissors to decorate. After the frosting is added, you can more toppings like colored sugars or any of the decorating items mentioned in the Prepwork section above.

Icing

It's a little harder to work with icing because of its liquid consistency. But, after it hardens, it producers pretty results! You cannot spread icing with a knife like you would do with frosting because it will run off the edges of the cookie. So, it should be piped like described above for the frosting. Before the icing hardens, you can apply nuts or sprinkles as mentioned with the frosting above. You can also throw on some marshmallows for a frosty, snow-covered look.