December Creative Play Day 7: Holiday Cookies by Candace Jedrowicz

PinExt December Creative Play Day 7: Holiday Cookies by Candace Jedrowicz

The Cool2Craft Creative Play theme for December is “Give Yourself a Gift.” You give to everyone else during the holidays and all year long. Time to give yourself a treat! Make something, go somewhere, do something that’s just for you and photograph it! Then share it with us – post it on the Cool2Craft Creative Play blog on the Hive. Anything goes! I’m going to run with this theme and craft every day in December. I’ll be posting tutorials and videos as well as making some kits available at the Marketplace. Join me on Cool2Craft for 31 days of blissful, healing, creative play and give yourself the gift of play, too! [Candace J.]

My daughter and I do Christmas cookies in a big way. The star of our cookie trays are the decorated sugar cookies. We take weeks deciding on a theme and selecting which cookie cutters we’ll use. Rudolph is always present. He is the hands-down fan favorite! We spend two days on just these cookies. It’s crazy, but we love it. Jan is the designer, I’m the laborer. Her character faces are always adorable, but I work faster with the icing, so we complement one another.

If that’s not your thing, or if you just plain don’t have time, I have good news for you! You can still decorate cookies with a couple of simple things you can get at the grocery store – And the family will love them!

	Here’s your shopping list: Any roundish cookie – Anna’s Ginger Thins are wonderful and they have a lovely scalloped edge Wilton White Cookie Icing Cake Mate Writing Icing, I used pastels, but primary colors would be great, too Almond flavoring (optional) I don’t care for the flavor of the Wilton’s so I add a couple of drops Okay, let’s talk about icing techniques. You’ll want to know straight lines, tapered lines and dots.

	1. Straight lines first –Take a few cookies out for practice, broken ones work great for this. A straight line begins with a touch down (let the tip of the icing touch the cookie) and a slight lift with steady pressure moving which ever direction you are comfortable with (I’m left-handed and I move right to left) followed with a gradual release of pressure at the end. The amount of pressure depends on the consistency of the icing. If you’re straining, try rinsing the cap in hot water. If it’s still very hard to get the icing out, add a few drops of water at a time and shake well. Practice until you are comfortable with the movement.

	2. Tapered lines – Begin as you did with straight lines, but release the pressure before the end. It’s a touch down, steady pressure and slight lift and a release of pressure about half the length of the line.

	3. Now for dots – Dots take a slow hand. Touch the tip down, give a little pressure and release pressure before lift AND lift very slowly. There will be a tail and you don’t want that tail to flop sideways, you want it to plop strait down. Use more pressure for large dots and less for smaller dots, keeping in mind that cookie icing is soft and will spread a bit.

	4. Snowflakes are a simple repeated pattern. They always have six sides, and each line has the same marks. Start with one line straight across.

	This cookie has nine scallops, so each of the three lines you make will begin at the peak of a scallop and end at the valley of a scallop.

	Now look at the shape you have and decide where to make marks that can be made in the same place on each line.

	I made crossed lines near the center here.

	The trick to crossing lines is making two dots on either side of the line. Release pressure while over the line, or you’ll have a blob instead of a cross. Last, I made crossed lines near the outer edges. See? It’s a snowflake!

	5. This cookie design has three colors. The white outline is done as you would a straight line. The difference is that you’ll want to steady your icing hand with your other hand to create the motion of a scalloped edge, holding the icing vertically over the line as you draw it.

	6. For the center of the cookie, I made holly leaves. It’s a touch down, a squiggly movement back and forth, with a release of pressure at the tip, as you would a tapered line.

	Make three leaves.

	7. Finally add your holly berry dots. I could have gone a bit smaller dots here, they spread quite a bit.

	8. Now let’s add some sprinkles and things. Follow the scalloped edge again, but stop half way to shake on some sprinkles. The icing surface dries quickly, so get’em on there! Repeat for the other half.

	9. Make Holly leaves as you did before and plop some cinnamon candies down for berries.

	10. This design is an easy Rudolph head. Start with a rectangle that’s tapered at one end. Give it some ears.

	Add dot eyeballs and the first antler lines.

	Add a few tapered lines to the antlers.

	Plop two blue sprinkles on the eyes. Finish with some dots for balance.

	11. For this wreath cookie, you’ll start with tapered line curls. Touch down, pressure and lift, release pressure half way through.

	Make a squiggly middle line.

	Place some cinnamon candies around.

	Snow is optional.

	12. The last design is easy peasy! Drizzle icing on the cookie from an inch or two above it.

	Shake on some sprinkles. Simple and elegant.

	13. Now, sit back and enjoy!