Fun Ways to Decorate Holiday Cookies

Every year, plates of holiday cookies begin to populate offices and homes. Oftentimes they're cut out into festive holiday shapes, such as trees and bells, and decorated with frosting and candy. But cookie decorating doesn't have to be so cookie cutter. Instead of pulling out the usual tricks, try these great decoration ideas:

1. Use fondant. This sugary coating is often used to coat petit fours and professional cakes, but it works well with cookies, too. After adding a few drops of food coloring and kneading it together, roll out the fondant into a 1/16 inch sheet. Use your cookie cutter to cut the fondant, then gently drape it over a cookie of the same shape. Press lightly so the fondant will take.

The best part about fondant is that it allows you to be precise, so you can create cookies that look like people or things without a lot of messy frosting. You can recreate your Christmas tree as a cookie or make cookies that look like your family members as a festive and fun project.

2. Add melted chocolate. A minty tree cookie would taste great in if it was partially dipped in milk chocolate, and a cherry biscotti could use a "hat" of white chocolate. To pull this decoration off, buy a bag of chocolate chips and let it melt in a double boiler on your stove (that fondue set you got last Christmas also would work well). Dip the cookie into the chocolate, shaking off the excess, and then place it on a piece of wax paper to cool. Once you're done, pop the cookies in the fridge so the chocolate will cool faster.

If you want, you can sprinkle colored sugar onto the chocolatey ends of your cookies to add more festive flair.

3. Christmas cookies don't have to be unhealthy. Why not add a few raisins, nuts or pieces of dried fruit to the top of a plain sugar cookie? The small pieces would look great as edible decorations on a tree cookie. These decorations are best cooked into the cookie itself. You can add more decorations, such as some nonpareils, to tie the decorations together. If you've already baked the cookies and you want to add some healthy flair, make the yogurt coating that's used in yogurt raisins. You can find the recipe here.

4. Make a really big cookie and create a holiday scene on it. Most people think that holiday cookies are only made with cookie cutters, but why not a big cookie sheet? With some royal icing and tiny decorations, such as edible silver balls, your giant cookie will be an edible masterpiece.

5. Be Jackson Pollock for a day. Kids love to help decorate cookies, but they often don't have the hand-eye coordination to make a perfect cookie. Instead, let them make fun designs on the cookies with various colors of royal icing. Paint splatters never seemed like a good thing, but at least you can clean these up (and eat them too!).

Staff, Fondant - Perfect for Cookie Decorations. Cookies-in-Motion.