fancy pants cookies

Any way you decorate your sugar cookies, they're bound to be tasty, but I think these marbled designs are quite an elegant way to decorate - and pretty easy too. I got the idea from a Martha Stewart special Christmas projects magazine I bought several years ago, and I've been doing this instead of sprinkles ever since.

Supplies:

• Sugar cookies (recipe here)
• Icing
• Food coloring
• Piping bags/tips
• Toothpicks

Start with some cutout cookies (my favorite recipe here) and mix up some basic frosting of powdered sugar + milk by adding milk in very small amounts to powdered sugar until you get a good consistency for spreading - not too thick, not too runny. You'll need a couple of different colors - I left some plain white, and then did some green and some red. A tip for making red frosting: start by making pink with a gel coloring, and then add the red gel coloring in. You'll use a lot less and actually get a red. Once the frosting is ready, put it into piping bags with small tips.

Spread a base color onto the cookie, and then pipe on some horizontal stripes of a different color. Run the toothpick through the stripes vertically, and voila! You can pull the toothpick through in just one direction (e.g. down) or do it up and down for a variation on the look.

To make the snowman with hearts, just make dots instead of stripes (and don't mind my stained fingertip - that gel coloring can make a mess!):

 They turn out slightly too pretty to eat, but that actually doesn't tend to hold me back much...

 

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