Baking & Decorating Christmas Cookie Delights

Holidays are always the best time to bake some terrific sweets, especially cookies, they are easily transported to parties and make terrific gifts. The recipes are endless it seems, varying on the where one lives and personal tastes, sugar cookies are always a favorite and there are several varieties. Although the ones my grandmother make every year are still my favorites, they were handed down from her mother and she calls them Depression Cookies. The recipe does not include eggs and skimps a bit on the sugar, but they are still delicious especially with a bit of colored icing.

This cookie recipe is Snowflake Cookies, these are placed on the cookie sheet through a press; use one that will allow for creating snowflake shapes, bake as directed. Then decorate with icing that has a hint of blue, create line shapes or dip each cookie in icing, then lightly sprinkle with silver sprinkles. Using a dough press allows for creating cookies with a peak, this makes for great dipping, use white chocolate that is melted and cooled slightly, dip the cookie in the chocolate, then sprinkle with silver or blue sprinkles. Dough presses come with a variety of tips that allow for creative baking; since not two snowflakes are alike you will be able to create a variety of snowflake shapes. Cathedral Windows cookies are a no bake fun cookie to make, easy and delicious from the reviews at ChristmasCookie.com . With these cookies they are shaped to look like pieces of stained glass, what a great opportunity to get creative. Create icing that will match and decorate, colored icing is fun, make red, green, white, yellow, even black to use as an outline perhaps around the edges. The recipe states to roll them refrigerate overnight and before serving then slice, this is great, but you could also roll them out and use a cookie cutter in the shapes desired. If you have cookie cutters in the shapes of angels or cut them into odd shapes rather than circles, then ice with your favorite colors, serve to your guests.

Then of course there is no Christmas without some form of Gingerbread people, this recipe is with butterscotch, called Butterscotch Gingerbread People. The fun part of decorating gingerbread people is that you can make female, male, children, there is no limit to the decorating ideas. There is the traditional with white icing trim around the outer edges, red candy used as buttons, small chocolate kisses for the eyes, other candy types to create the rest of the face, but there is the opportunity to make a Santa Gingerbread man, give him a red suite, black belt, small sprinkles to make his beard and mustache. Give your gingerbread gals cool decorations, using the different types of sprinkles to create jewelry like necklaces and bracelets, designer shoes and clothes.

This last recipe is for Stained Glass Window Cookies , the person who wrote this recipe says that these are more for decoration as the candy hardens and makes it hard to eat them. However, one could modify it so that the cookies are baked without the candy. Creating your own candy toppings, ones that will not be so hard to eat, and these could be placed on the cookies prior to baking. Using icing in different colors like red, green, orange, to top the cookies, again make them in shapes that resemble stained glass. Take mint candies, the ones that are red and white, crush not to small and sprinkle over the top of your cookies. The Neon Stars Candy I found at Candy Direct is small hard candies, but not so hard they are not easily eaten, they make a great stained glass coloring.