3 techniques to decorate your holiday cookies

’Tis the season for the aroma of baked goods to fill your home. ’Tis also the season for holiday decorations – so why not decorate your annual festive cookies? Whether you’re a seasoned baker or a beginner, try one of these three cookie-decorating techniques (and great ideas) to add flair to your cookies and make them the stars of your holiday spread.

Outlining

As with colouring in a picture, lining your edges is the first step to decorating your cookies. By outlining the cookie, you prevent the icing from spilling over the edges when filling it in. Make use of a piping bag with a small round tip and fill it with royal icing. Make sure the icing is thick enough to hold its shape, but still thin enough to spread easily. Line the edges and wait a few minutes for them to dry.

Watch on TikTok

Flooding

The technique to cover the entire surface of the cookie with icing is called flooding. This technique requires a looser consistency of icing than you would need for outlining. Using a piping bag, continuously follow the outline of your cookie until the entire cookie is covered. Once done, leave for an hour for the icing to set and harden.

Check out this video to see if the consistency of your icing is ready for flooding:

Watch on TikTok

Marbling

You don’t need to be a skilled baker for this technique, but the result will impress all your friends. Marbling is a wet-on-wet icing technique and is used to create a single layer of icing with two or more colours bleeding together to form a beautiful, blended effect. The trick is to work quickly while the icing is still wet. Once your cookie is flooded, pipe horizontal lines across the surface. Then, use a toothpick and drag it from the top of the cookie downwards through the icing and continue doing so across the cookie, blending the two colours.