Decorating Christmas Cookies

Decorating Christmas Cookies is our favorite holiday tradition and we have the best recipes and tips for throwing your own Christmas cookie decorating party.

I have a soft spot in my heart for frosting sugar cookies.  When Laurie and I were little, before I was big enough to help with the Sherry Cake or English Toffee, my mom would always let us frost sugar cookies.  We would sing along to Christmas carols, laugh, and have fun decorating Christmas cookies.  It is one of my most treasured memories.  My daughter turned four this year, so I wanted to include her in our tradition.  Laurie, Allison, and I sat around our dining room table, listened to Christmas carols, laughed, and had fun decorating cookies.  We have all the recipes you’ll need and some tips to get you started with your own Christmas Cookie decorating tradition.

The foundation of a truly memorable time decorating christmas cookies is a great sugar cookie.  You need to look no further than our Best Sugar Cookie recipe to find that cookie. It tastes amazing, it’s easy to make and the cookie really holds its’ shape when baking.   You’ll find the recipe and detailed instructions on how to make these cookies here.

The recipe for Best Sugar Cookies made 36 cookies using our medium Christmas Cookie Cutters.  We have a ton of Christmas Cookie cutters but we invariably use these six year in and year out.  They are a good Goldilocks size – not too big and not too small.  And they don’t have a lot of delicate edges that tend to break off when you are frosting them or storing the frosted cookies.   We usually bake the sugar cookies a couple of weeks before of our decorating party and freeze them until the day of the party.  These cookies freeze up great – is there anything these cookies do not do?!

We always use our Best Buttercream Frosting when decorating Christmas Cookies.  You’ll find the recipe and directions here. You are seeing two batches split up into three equal parts in the picture above.  Whenever we just make one batch, we run out.  Sometimes when we make two batches, we have too much.  It really depends on how generous we are with the frosting on the cookies.   This year we just made white, red and green frosting so the cookies would have a coordinated look.  But sometimes we go crazy with colors – adding yellow, blue, purple, black, etc.  Again, this depends on the cookie cutters we choose.  We have a cute Gingerbread House and we usually want more colors to do that correctly.  When we use our Santa cookie cutter we want black for his belt.  You get the idea.  This frosting is delicious, there really is no such thing as too much.

When we were young, our cookie decorating tools were only kitchen knives.   One year Laurie had the brilliant idea to use a toothpick to do some more delicate frosting work.  When I started learning more about cake and cupcake decorating we started using pastry bags and decorating tips.   You can get them in any craft store, Target or Walmart. They are easier to use then you think and they will really will take your cookie decorating to a new level.

Here’s another tip … the frosting in the bags will start melting a bit from the heat of your hands.  For the last couple of years we have kept the frosting bags on ice packs when we aren’t using then in order to slow down the melting process.  If your don’t have any of these and the the frosting gets too melty, stick the bags in the freezer for 2 or 3 minutes.  That will also do the trick.

If you are wanting to make a pretty snowflake, here is a step by step guide to how to make a flower cookie into a snowflake.

We mostly use frosting when decorating Christmas Cookies but sometimes we break out the Christmas sprinkles like on these cookies.

We love how our frosted Christmas Cookies turned out this year.   Pretty and delicous … a perfect combination.  You can frost your Christmas Cookies early in December and freeze them until Christmas.  They taste great when they are defrosted.   (Our mom wouldn’t like us to tell you this but she was fond of eating the cold frosted cookies before they fully thawed out.)  Before you start packing up your cookies, let the frosting dry for a couple of hours at least or the decorations will get flattened.  We use big plastic air tight containers to store the cookies in the freezer. Remeber to add a piece of aluminum foil between each cookie layer in the container to protect your decorated Christmas Cookies.

But most importantly, we will always remember that this was the year that Allison was old enough to fill Mom’s spot at the decorating table.  Laurie and I were so happy she had fun with us.   Here’s to many MANY more years of our holiday tradition of decorating Christmas Cookies!  Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

You May Also Like:

• The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe
• The Best Buttercream Frosting
• DIY Sprinkles