Decorating a Vintage-Inspired Ornament Sugar Cookie

Directions

• 1

  Bake and cool cookies before decorating. Try Ann Clark's classic gingerbread cookie recipe. Make sure cookies are fully cooled. If they are warm, the icing will run off of them. Make royal icing.

• 2

  Prepare the following icing colors:
  
  Detail Consistency:
  White

  Red

  Gold (mix a tiny amount of Mocha Brown food coloring into your Lemon Yellow icing to get gold)

  Flood Consistency:
  White

• 3

  Outline the round part of the ornament with white detail consistency icing, then fill with white flood icing. Be sure not to fill in the collar of the ornament with white, we'll return to this later.

• 4

  Pipe squiggles in gold detail consistency icing on the collar of the ornament, then pipe a loop at the top of the collar in gold detail consistency icing. Let the cookie dry until it is just crusted over--this can take up to 1 hour.

• 5

  Use white detail consistency icing to outline oblong tapered ovals along the body of the ornament. These will be the areas that you add sanding sugar to, so pipe them as large or as small as you'd like.

• 6

  Fill the oblong ovals with white flood consistency royal icing, and move quickly to the next step.

• 7

  While the white flood is still wet, gently dip the cookie into a plate or flat tupperware filled with sanding sugar. You don't need to press on the cookie, the weight of the cookie should be enough for the sanding sugar crystals to stick.

• 8

  Once satisfied with the sanding sugar coverage, use red detail consistency icing to pipe dots and embellishments on the ornament.