Christmas Cookies to Decorate

A cut-out dough with little or no leavening, a full chill before cutting, and a second chill on the sheet before baking. Butter-heavy sugar cookie and shortbread doughs hold their edges; anything with baking powder or extra egg puffs up and blurs the shape. Roll a quarter inch thick so the cookie is sturdy enough to flood.

Royal icing dries hard with a smooth sheen, so it stacks, ships and takes fine detail. A powdered-sugar glaze sets firm but softer and is the easy choice for kids and for dipping. Buttercream never fully sets, so keep it for cookies eaten the same day and do not stack them.

Start with a white base. Meringue Powder whipped with powdered sugar and water dries a clean white on its own, with no titanium dioxide in the powder, and Royal Icing Mix needs only water. Use clear vanilla if you have it, since standard extract tints the icing a shade toward cream, and let the cookies dry out of direct sun.

Bake up to a month ahead and freeze the plain cookies, or three days ahead in an airtight tin at room temperature. Decorate two days before you need them. A flood coat is dry to the touch in about an hour and set through in six to eight, so give decorated cookies a full night uncovered before you stack, bag or box them.

Put the color in the sugar instead of the icing. Naturally-Colored Sanding Sugars get their red and green from plants, so press them onto wet icing or onto raw dough before baking and the cookie is finished. If you still want tinted icing, keep it to one accent color and let the sugar carry the rest.

Decorate before baking. Brush cut-outs with a little water or egg white, press on sanding sugar or sprinkles, and bake. After baking, a thin glaze in one bowl per color with a spoon in each beats piping bags every time. Lay parchment under everything and give each kid a tray, and keep a dozen plain ones back for the batch you decorate yourself.