Easy Cookie Decorating Ideas For Children

Easy Cookie Decorating Ideas For Children Making cookies is a great way to spend some quality time with your children. They like to help and here are some ways to get them started without a lot of fuss. You can buy or make up a little icing beforehand. If you are making the icing, use meringue powder instead of raw eggs. Here is an easy icing that dries glossy and makes a little over a cup. Beat 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of meringue powder with 2 cups of powdered sugar. Add ¼ cup of warm water and ½ teaspoon of your favorite extract flavor. Avoid maple or vanilla unless you have the clear-colored extracts or you will end up with brown icing. Mix on low for 4 minutes.

Separate your icing into several bowls. Let the kids add some red and green food coloring, but remember to keep some just plain white icing. Find some unused paint brushes if you have them for the little artists to dab on eyes or swirls with the colored icing. And arrange all the different sprinkles, sugars, chips, coconut flakes and candies that can be used for decoration. If you have any straws they can come in handy, also. If you are making cut out cookies, you can make it easy on yourself by cutting some simple round shapes. Suggest that they are faces, balloons or balls from their favorite sport or any other round object. Save a little dough, color it yellow or brown (equal amounts of red, blue and yellow coloring) and squeeze it through a garlic press to make hair. Attach it to the top of the round cookies as if it is hair and bake. Mixing food coloring with coconut flakes also makes hair. You can create Christmas carolers by using your straw to make a hole for the mouth before baking the cookies. Cut small pieces off a gumdrop and attach them with a little icing where the ears would be. They look like earmuffs. You can also place them into the dough before baking. If you have graham crackers, you don't have to make any cookies at all. Just turn the square so the points are at the top and bottom and make a Santa Claus face. Put down a small layer of white icing on all but the top inch or so of the triangular point. Before it dries attach coconut flakes on the bottom point for a beard. With red icing spread the top inch triangular point for a hat. Attach more coconut across the bottom of the red triangle for the hat trim and at the very tip to complete Santa's hat. A red cinnamon candy or red M&M-type candy will do for the nose. You could even use the tip of a red licorice stick or a small piece cut from a red gum drop. Eyes can be any other tiny colored candies you may have on hand or just some green-colored icing. Decorating doesn't have to be complex, nor do you need dozens of different-shaped cutters. Let the children paint a design on the round cookies with different colors using a paintbrush. They can write their names or initials in icing. Two teaspoons of vodka with ½ teaspoon of luster dust allows you to paint sparkling designs on top of dried icing. The alcohol will evaporate. Cutting out the center of a round cookie before baking creates a wreath that can be decorated. Placing a tiny open cookie cutter in the center of an iced cookie before it dries, allows you to add sprinkles on the inside of the cutter that will make the shape of the tiny cutter. Add a little icing in the center of a cookie and place an animal cracker on top. The opportunities are endless and only limited by you or your children's imagination. Easy Cookie Decorating Ideas For Children