If one person on the planet got to hold the title of “most obsessed with cookie decorating,” Monica Signer would volunteer to be that person.
Signer, who lives in Berthoud, translates business needs into software requirements for a living. Her passion, cookie decorating, uses a whole different part of her brain.
This holiday, she is on a quest to create a complete gingerbread scene. A trip to Austria and Switzerland last Christmas – full of snow-covered mountains, the beautiful villages – and “The Great British Baking Show” served as further inspiration for her sugary task this winter. Who can’t relate to wanting to hop right into the kitchen after every GBBS episode?
The day after hosting 12 people at her home to decorate cookies, she was busy creating a thimble-sized Abominable Snowman face (yes, the one from the 1964 “Rudolph” special) out of royal icing. Copying the face from a full-sized Abominable design on her phone made her giggle like the 9-year-old she’d just hosted in her kitchen the day before.
For Mary Richmond, who owns The Cookie Sheet with Diane Bellamy, decorated cookies are about the delight they create before her customers even eat them – in fact, before her customers even see them. She recently created a “milk and doughnuts” set of cookies for a first birthday party with milk bottles, doughnut-shaped cookies and sippy cups.
Easy, right?
While the thought of a giant gingerbread landscape or a themed cookie platter may seem incredibly intimidating to most, we feel our creativity and willingness to try come alive during the holiday season.
The concept isn’t too hard: cut, bake, cool, decorate. And with foolproof tips from Signer and Richmond for the most whimsical, beautiful, enticing decorated cookies, you’re sure to be the hit of every engagement this month.
The dough
The goal: a smooth, dense dough that doesn’t crack when rolled out to 3/8 inches thick. It should neither spread nor rise much when baked.
The challenge: Each batch you make may be different depending on humidity and how dry your flour is. Signer found that a dry, cracking gingerbread dough could be helped by increasing the molasses (not the fat or water) by 20 percent.
Expert tip: Richmond votes for a butter shortbread recipe rather than a sugar cookie dough. “Sugar spreads, it will sag, it will not come out. I will stack shortbread against any recipe; it’s delicious and it keeps its shape,” she said.
The roll
The goal: Fast, efficient dough production and cutting.
The challenge: Keeping your countertop safe while also not wrecking your back stooping over the dining-room table. Signer recommends combining two special tools – a silicone roll-out mat that doesn’t slide on the countertop, and reusable, copper-colored nonstick baking sheets. The silicone will adhere to the counter, the copper mat will grip the silicone, and you can cut the dough on the copper. Remove your excess dough, then just lift the copper baking mat onto the sheet pan to bake the cookies. This means you don’t have to lift cut cookies to transfer them.
The newcomer’s tip: Many cookie recipes call for refrigerating the dough. Signer found this didn’t help with cracking, but did make the dough a genuine pain to roll out. What did help, however, was rolling out room-temperature dough, then refrigerating the cut cookies in the sheet pan until chilled.
The bake
The goal: Crispy, smooth cookies that will hold icing.
The challenge: Achieving perfectly baked, crisp, dense cookies that won’t shatter.
The tip: With gingerbread, you do not want the edges to begin to get more brown than the centers. Also, plan on turning your pan, which will help give you even results. With older ovens, use an oven thermometer and/or baking or pizza stones on the bottom rack. This increases preheating time, but helps your oven heat more evenly. All ovens differ, so knowing the quirks of your oven is the key. Signer adds that for her, the 3 / 8 – inch thickness is key: Thinner, and the cookies tend to warp if they’re moved before cooking, and break once cooked.
The icing
The goal: Beautiful and tasty.
The challenge: The perfect icing for cookie decorating is all about consistency. There’s “icing glue” – the thick, paste-like stuff Signer will use to attach cookie walls and structural supports in three-dimensional elements. Then there’s “piping” icing for outlines, stars and textural elements; and “flood” icing which, with the help of a few smoothing tools, creates a solid coat of color across the surface of the cookie.
The newcomer’s tip: When you’re thinning icing, Signer says to go slowly – add a drop of water at a time to your cup-or-less of icing. In addition, letting icing sit overnight (or, in the case of black, for days) intensifies the color. When all else fails, there’s also Google, and Facebook groups like Cookie Decorating for Beginners.
The bottom line: The important difference in all four types of icing is consistency, and consistency is controlled with the amount of water.
The fun stuff: decorating
The goal: Keep your energy and creativity high, and keep turning out beautiful, appetizing cookies
The challenge: It’s hard! Not everyone is an icing artist.
The newcomer’s tips: Have all the prep done so you can focus on the artistic part. That means having your cookies baked and your icing prepared and colored ahead of time, and all of your tools laid out. The bigger the flat surface to play on, the better, so clear the table. Look online for cookie designs you like, and practice the same design over and over again on parchment paper or a plate. “I always try to do too many things at once,” Signer said, “so I need to sit down and do 12 of the same cookies. That’s how you get good at a design.” She also recommends watching YouTube videos by Julia M. Usher, author of Ultimate Cookies.
Expert tips: “Sit with the (icing) bag and practice,” Richmond said. “There’s a lot of ways you can hold the bag. I hold it like a pencil.” Once you’re confident, let yourself go, she added. Put your heart and soul into it. She also doesn’t “flood” – she instead creates an icing-based glaze that’s thinner and dips the whole cookie to coat it. “Everyone is different, but even beginners are creating something that makes someone feel really good,” she said.
And, of course, you could always take a cookie decorating class such as the two coming up on Dec. 15 in Fort Lupton, hosted by Get Baked bakery.
Five bonus tips
- Both Signer and Richmond tend to work “tipless,” using plain icing bags with a tiny snip taken out of the end. No need for fancy plastic or metal tools here. Signer says when you go to snip a hole in the end of the pastry bag, put the bag’s seam in the middle, not the end or beginning, of the cut. You’ll get a true round hole that way.
- Icing left over? There are several things you can do. Push the icing away from the point of the bag (so that it doesn’t clog); fold it over and clip it closed with a small binder clip, then freeze or refrigerate. You can also drop the bag into another pastry bag WITH a decorative tip, and make leaves, stars, or rosettes with the remaining icing, allow them to dry, and then freeze or refrigerate them for later cookie-making sessions.
- Signer swears by gel food coloring, available from craft, specialty and baking catalogs, for tinting her icing. Remember that colors will intensify and darken overnight.
- Signer buys Wilton’s meringue powder for her royal icing, and uses the recipe on the package. You can use real egg whites, she says, but be sure they are pasteurized.
- During decorating sessions, it helps to distinguish between bags of flood and piping icing with a special ribbon around the wide end of the pastry bag for one of the two kinds. Try to keep the two types of icing on two separate, different colored plates, as well.
Recipes
Gingerbread
Flour weights matter in cookie baking. If you don’t have a gram scale, err on the side of too little flour, then add as you go. The conversions here are approximate. Recipe by Monica Signer
Ingredients
- 500 g (3 1 / 3 cups) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 3 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1 1 / 2 teaspoons ground cloves
- 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small dice
- 40 g (about 1 / 4 cup) sugar
- 2 medium eggs
- 120 g (about 1 / 3 cup) molasses
Directions
In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and spices together. Add the butter and cut in with pastry cutter to avoid melting the butter. Cut in until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar. In another large bowl, mix the eggs with the molasses. Using a stand mixer or strong hand mixer (or lots of elbow grease), add the flour mixture and mix to combine and form a soft dough. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth. Wrap in clear plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes or more.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line four baking trays with parchment. Halve the dough, then divide one half of the dough into thirds. Working with one section of dough, roll it out 3 / 8 inches thick on the floured surface. As in the tips above, roll out the dough and cut the shapes on the baking liner or parchment so that you never have to lift cut cookies. When a tray is full, chill for 10 minutes before baking.
Bake each tray of cookies for 9 minutes, turn pan, and bake for 4 to 5 more minutes or until gingerbread is firm to touch in the center of each cookie (don’t wait until the cookies brown; that means they’re burned.) Remove from oven and tidy up any shapes while cookies are hot. Leave cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 to 10 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Gluten-free Dark Chocolate Cut-out Cookies
Gluten-free flours vary widely in their ingredients. After many tests, we found that Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour yielded the tastiest and smoothest cookie; don’t judge it by the taste of the dough itself, which is awful! The two kinds of cocoa give the cookie a deep but not bitter chocolate flavor. Finally, because the cookies aren’t leavened, it doesn’t matter whether the baking cocoa powder is Dutch processed. Recipe by Monica Signer
Ingredients
- 500 g (4 scant cups) Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour, plus extra for dusting
- 75 g (about 3 / 4 cup) cocoa powder – half regular baking cocoa and half Black Onyx Cocoa Powder, available at Savory Spice Shop
- 2 pinches salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 320 g ( 1 1 / 2 cups plus 1 tablespoon) sugar
- 2 1 / 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 eggs, room temperature
Directions
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder and salt. In another bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and vanilla until fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until combined. Stir in the dry ingredients. Turn out onto a clean surface with a little flour and knead just until the dough comes together and is smooth. Flatten into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate to chill only slightly before rolling, or, if chilling for longer, allow to come back to a working temperature, as this dough will crumble if cold.
Preheat oven to 350. Roll dough out to 3 / 8 inches thick; cut shapes on parchment or baking mats. Chill cut cookies on baking sheets for 20 minutes before baking.
Bake cookies for 9 minutes, turn the pan, and bake for 7 more minutes, depending on the size of the cookie. They should be just beginning to darken at the edges and be firm to the touch in the center when they are done. Cool for 5 to 10 minutes on the baking sheets before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Royal icing
Make sure all utensils are free of grease and oils. Recipe adapted from Wilton.com
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons meringue powder
- 5 tablespoons warm water
- 4 cups confectioner’s sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
Directions
In a small bowl, mix the meringue powder and warm water to reconstitute. To a large bowl, add the confectioner’s sugar, and then the meringue powder mix. Mix thoroughly until the pale tan color turns pure white and peaks form. Do not overwhip, as this just adds bubbles that cause problems later on. This recipe makes a very thick icing; you can flavor it at this stage if desired. Working quickly, subdivide the batch into several small bowls to add coloring. Keep inactive bowls covered with plastic wrap; otherwise the icing will crust on the top, which will form dry bits that will clog icing bags.
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