Christmas Cookie Designs

Christmas Cookie Designs

By David J. Stewart | December 2017

My daughter, her friend and I made Christmas cookies for church and friends over the weekend. Here some photos of our cookies. The nice ones my daughter designed. The not so great ones were my attempt...

ABOVE: Cookie icing. It is easy to make. Just take 4 cups (1 lb box) of powdered sugar; 3 teaspoons of bottled lemon juice; 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract; and 4 egg whites (1/2 cup). Put the eggs whites into a mixing bowl and whip with an electric mixer until the egg whites turn foamy. Then add the lemon juice and vanilla extract. Add the sugar last and mix for about 5 minutes. Then use some small bowls (I used Styrofoam disposable bowls). Divide your mix into the bowls, as much as you want, and add food coloring. To make the colors above. I mixed red and blue to make purple. I mixed red and yellow to make orange. Use less red to make pink, since you're starting with white. Obviously, the original mix is white. You can use less blue to make light-blue. Mixing green and red makes brown. Mixing blue, red and yellow make brown. There are many more colors available, which you can make by mixing primary colors, which you can learn about on the internet. Cut a piece of parchment paper into a triangle, roll it into a cone with a very fine tip, fill it with the icing, and then twist the open end to seal it. If needed, barely cut the tip off the funnel. Squeeze the tube and decorate your cookies.

NOTE: If you buy icing, don't buy cake and cupcake icing, because it won't harden and dry. Betty Crocker does sell some cookie icing that hardens. My icing DOES harden. If you use a small fan, it will dry faster, so you can stack your cookies. Why buy icing, when you can mix your own for much less cost, and simply make all the colors you want.

For the cookies themselves, we used Betty Crocker's 21 ounce powdered sugar cookie mix which comes in a bag. We used several bags. You just add a stick of unsalted butter and one egg, then mix, and roll out on a floured surface with a rolling pin, then use cookie cutters to form the cool shapes.