It’s not even Thanksgiving for some of you, yet here I am with another Christmas themed video. I hope you don’t mind that I’m a preparing early and have more holiday-themed cookies to share with you. These ones are fairly simple to make and I find them so endearing. Thanks to Meri Meri for most of the design ideas and adorable cookie cutters, which I found at How Sweet is That?’s shop. If you’d like to start baking and decorating early, click on the links to find posts on freezing cookies, thawing cookies and the shelf life of cookies.
I also have some exciting news for you regarding a holiday giveaway! You’ll find the details after the tutorial info. below.
How to Decorate Christmas Cookies – Simple Designs for Beginners
Click here if you can’t see the video.
Cookie Recipe
These are gingerbread cookies; you can find the recipe here. There are other cut-out cookie recipes here.
You cand find the cookie cutters I used by clicking on the corresponding word below (some of these are affiliate links):
Royal Icing
You can find my favorite royal icing recipe here. The consistency of icing is key for easy decorating. Click here to see a YouTube video on finding the right icing thickness.
Decorating Items
What you’ll need (These are affiliate links):
- Piping Tips – PME #1, PME #1.5 , PME #2, PME #3
- Piping Bags
- Couplers
- Gel Colors; Wilton Brown (for both reindeer faces and dark antlers. Use lots of brown for the antlers with a touch of black), Wilton Pink, Wilton No-Taste Red, Wilton Black, Americolor Forest Green
- Scribe Tool or Toothpicks
- Long Tweezers
- Frosting Sheet
- Snowflake Punch (make sure you check the size you want)
- Red Candies (make sure you check the size you want)
- Edible Silver Dust
- Silver Disco Dust (See notes. Is non-toxic, but not edible, for decorative purposes only)
- Coffee Filter
Decorating Steps
This video on outlining and flooding is a good place to start if you’re new to decorating cookies with royal icing. These cookie decorating basics YouTube videos may also be helpful to get you started.
Besides the video tutorial on YouTube which I’ve shared above, I’ve also shared a few how-to videos on Instagram, which you can see here.
Notes
- For more detail on how to make royal icing transfers (the little “peppermints” I made for the trees), this post here explains how to near the bottom half of the post.
- The trees are inspired by stickers. More explained in this post.
- Thanks for your feedback on Instagram regarding the size of Rudolph’s nose. 🙂 I ended up mainly going with the smaller red candy, but the larger one is definitely fun.
- I used non-edible silver disco dust in the video because I had it on hand, and some of the cookies are for demonstration purposes and the others are going on a friend’s tree. You can buy edible sparkle here. Just make sure it’s labelled as edible.
- I can’t find the exact mitten cookie cutter online, I originally bought it at Target, but you can find similar ones here.
- The video is in fast forward for the sake of time, but if you have any questions about the decorating process, please feel free to ask below!
Holiday Giveaway News!
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a giveaway. I’m so excited to share that I’ll be hosting a holiday giveaway very very soon, likely tomorrow, which includes the following prizes:
- Large Cake Pop Roller from Heavenly Cake Pops
- Dough E-Z Mat and Guides
- Ticings Plant-Based Gourmet Chocolate Sprinkles
- An array of prizes from How Sweet is That?’s shop, including one of the Meri Meri Christmas cookie cutter sets pictured in this post, a Stencil Genie, 3 Christmas Wilton cookie cutter sets and 3 Dinkydoodle Matte Airbrush Colors (Red, white, yellow)
- $50.00 gift certificate to Stencibelle’s shop
- An Airbrush System from Dinkydoodle Designs
- Set of 2 Vanilla Extracts, and 6 Bakery Emulsions of your choice from LorAnn Oils
- $50.00 gift certificate to The Gingerbread Cutter Co.’s online shop
One person is going to win ALL of those prizes! I would be excited to enter, and can’t wait to share the giveaway with you!
If you have any questions or comments please feel free to drop me a line below in the comment section or on social media. You can find me on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube.
xo,
Marian
Your cookies are amazing! You make it look so easy!
Thanks Kate!
Dazzling cute they are!
Thanks Roshini!
Your cookies look truly amazing! Can you tell me where I can find these fabulous cookie cutters?
Hi Jovana,
Thanks! I have listed the sources I can find in the blog post. There are a few that I can’t find online anymore, so have put similar links. Hope that helps!
Hi Marian,
Beautiful creative amazing Christmas cookies again! You make it look so easy to do. The video is very well done. I love the background melody! NOW, I just hope for a study hand like yours!!!!
Thank you for taking all this time to teach me your admiring talents.
ML
I hope it’s not to late to enter, and this is the right place. Just got started decorating cookies and this would be a great help.
wow thats all i can say and thank you for the inspiration and links to buy the supplies so excited to get started!!!!
Hello Sweetopia, thank you very much for this tutorial. I bought Meri2 Cookie cutter set Rudolf and Santa, thanks to you for sharing the info 🙂
May I know how long I need to bake them since they are quite large? Thank you for answering 🙂
Hi Lena,
Wonderful, I’m so glad to hear it!
It will depend on how thick yours are, but in my oven, with my gingerbread cookie recipe (and you can see how thick they are), it was 12 minutes.
Hope that helps!
HI!
I would like to know how you make all your royal icing colors. Especially black!
Thank you,
Kimberley
Hi Kimberley,
Colors like black and red take A LOT of food paste/gel coloring. Here is a post for you on how I color my red icing, and it is very similar to black; https://sweetopia.net/2014/11/how-to-color-icing-red-decorated-christmas-cookies/
Hope that helps!
Beautiful! Going to attempt these next weekend ! Also love the white plates with the puffy dots around the edge – where did you find those?
Have fun decorating Kyla!
I got the plates from Home Sense, this season, so they should be there if there’s a store near you.
Love these cookies! Is the snowman’s face a different color than his beard? If so, what color? Also, how do you get the shade of icing for the reindeer?
Thank you Carolina! Yes, Santa’s face is a little beige. I used Wilton ivory, and for the reindeer, Wilton brown.
I admire your work.
Hi Kel, thank you, I do appreciate you taking the time to comment!
Ohmigosh!!
I stumbled across your site and am COOKIE HEAVEN! I’m literally running out the door to get supplies & make these. I hope they can look half as good as yours do! Thank you so much for sharing!!!
Alexis, you are so cute! I hope you have fun and feel free to ask me questions here if you have any… I’ll do my best to answer quickly.
xo
Very good
So cute they r…really nice to see this..amazing..
Can i get your recipe of sugar cookies? i have made them with wilton’s recipe but they have lost it’s shape 🙁
Hi Nona,
Here it is; https://sweetopia.net/2009/12/sugar-cookie-recipe/
Please also check out these tips for preventing spreading:
https://sweetopia.net/2011/04/top-8-tips-on-preventing-cookies-from-spreading/
Hi Marion! I’ve looked through your links but didn’t see one for the side Reindeer cutter, did I miss it? Thanks!
Your cookies are just so beautiful!! I was all set to order the santa and reindeer but it seems they are sold out. Do you recommend any other santa and reindeer cutters? Thank you so much!! Love your blog <3
Your cookies are beautiful! Looks easy when you do it, but I can only imagine how long it would take me to make them look so good.
How big are your cookies? The cutter links either don’t go anywhere or they go to amazon in general but not specific cutters. Gorgeous work and fabulous website!❤️❤️❤️❤️
Hi Beverly,
Yes, I linked to the general pages of each cookie cutter shape because sometimes Amazon sells out of the specific cutter if I link to it. Which shape(s) are you looking for and I can share some specific links here in the comments.
Hello, I watched your video tutorial on these cookies. I was wondering about the swirls on the Santa’s beard. You made a note of the icing being “thick icing”. Did you mean a thicker consistency than 10 second icing? Could you please share how many seconds thick icing would be?
I was also wondering if you believe in drying the cookies under a fan or allowing them to dry at room temperature without anything else?
Hi Jen,
Sure, the icing that is thick will make a peak if you dip and lift a spoon out of it. Explained another way; dip a spoon into your icing, lift the spoon out and pull away… If the icing you just lifted the spoon out of leaves a little peak that doesn’t disappear back into the icing, you have thick icing.
I dry my cookies at room temperature, here is a video on my tips here:
https://sweetopia.net/2012/01/video-how-to-dry-cookies-decorated-with-royal-icing/
Happy decorating!
Thank you for taking the time to explain it!
Hi Marian, is your wavy tree cutter 6.5” or 5.5” long please?