Decorate Holiday Cut-Out Cookies Like A Pro!

Imagine it’s a crisp December day and white sugary snow has blanketed the ground outside your kitchen window. The oven provides warmth to your house and the thought of adding sweet buttery smells sound lovely and inviting. You say to yourself, “Today is a perfect day to make and decorate holiday cut-out cookies!”

Would you like to elevate your holiday cookie efforts or just try something new? Let Dan Pivovar help you out! Dan has worked in the food and hospitality industry for 25 years, the last eight as a pastry chef. His career spans New York City to Pittsburgh and Arkansas. He and his family now live in Onalaska, and he is currently the Deli and Market Supervisor at Schuby’s Neighborhood Butcher. Dan was also in the 2023 Food Network’s Halloween Baking Championship. Dan sat down with ViaroThrive’s Education Specialist, Heidi Kutz, to share tips, ideas, and encouragement.

Heidi: Dan, thank you so much for taking some time to encourage bakers this holiday season with a few of your tips and recommendations. Let’s start with cut-out cookies and the cookie dough. Cookie dough for cut-outs can be intimidating. Many people choose store-bought dough. What are your thoughts on store-bought dough versus homemade?

Dan: If you want to use premade dough to make your life easier, there’s nothing wrong with that, but cut-out cookie dough is very simple. It’s pretty much butter, flour, sugar, and eggs. Some recipes don’t even have eggs. I think it is an approachable cookie for a home cook, an amateur baker, or someone trying this cookie for the first time. Just Google “cut-out cookie recipe” and you’ll find 100 recipes.

PRO TIP. When making a homemade recipe, always bake with unsalted butter. Add the salt yourself if you need to with your dry ingredients. You want to control of all the ingredients you can. Dan never bakes with salted butter.

Heidi: I am 99.9% sure I know your answer, but here goes. What is the best frosting for decorating cut-out cookies?  Store-bought or homemade?

Dan: I never use store-bought. It has a place if you’re frosting a cake or cupcakes, or if you’re not creating a picture or design. But if you’re trying to be delicate and artsy, royal icing is the way to go, and it’s easy. It’s just egg whites and powdered sugar.

PRO TIP. Do not ice the cookies until they are fully cooled. Be patient. If you decorate too soon, the icing will run right off your cookie.

Heidi: You’re making this sound relatively easy and instilling some bravery in me. The homemade dough and royal icing don’t sound quite as intimidating. Next step. How do we ice the cookies?

Dan: That’s the fun part. Let me introduce two words from the cookie decorating world, wall and flooding. The wall is the outline around the shape of the cookie, like a snowman or tree. Flooding is the process of filling in the wall. To make clean, flooded cookies, you need to make two different consistencies of royal icing. Since the wall is the outline, you want a very thin line of thicker icing. For flooding, the icing can be a bit looser, not runny, but looser. Once your wall is up you can put your flood in at a wider tip to fill in the cookie. The look of flooded cookies for Christmas is super affective.

Heidi: Since the icing recipe is just powdered sugar and egg whites, what’s the best way to get these two different consistencies?

Dan: It’s pretty simple. The more powdered sugar you use, the stiffer the icing gets. If you’re making icing in one batch, get your flooding consistency first. Separate some of that, and then add more sugar to get the thicker icing for the wall.

Heidi: We may need a little encouragement here. There’s no need to be intimidated by royal icing?

Dan: Not at all. Royal icing is super approachable, and you don’t even need a kitchen mixer. When I make royal icing, I whisk it in a bowl. The perfect royal icing for me is literally just egg whites, powdered sugar, and a few drops of vanilla extract.

PRO TIP. Consistency is key. Typically, royal icing can be thicker than you think it needs to be. You want the icing pipeable from a pastry bag, but not runny.

Heidi: What about the tools needed to decorate with icing? Being new to this, there are those that may not want to spend a lot of money and stick to their holiday budget. What are the basics that won’t cost a lot?

Dan: It can be super affordable to decorate cut-out cookies.  You can get a box of inexpensive piping bags and tips at Festival or Walmart, and when you’re flooding cookies, you don’t even need the tips. Just snip the end of bag.

PRO TIP. When piping the outline, cut a very small hole at the bottom of the piping bag to get a tiny thin line for the wall. When flooding, cut the hole at the bottom of the bag a little bigger to fill in the cookie. Outline first, then the flood won’t run off your cookie.

Heidi: When using the wall and flooding method, how long does the icing take to set?

Dan: The wall doesn’t take much time at all. When you’ve finished outlining the cookie, you can start flooding. The flood does take a little more time to set.

PRO TIP. If you have bumps, bubbles or ripples, you can take a toothpick and gently smooth it out.

Heidi: How important is the quality of the baking sheets? Do we need to spend a little more on those to make a quality cookie?

Dan: We use Airbake cookie sheets at my house. They are the big silver ones with the pockets on the bottom of the sheet.  If you are baking with a generic cookie sheet, I recommend parchment paper. Airbake pans don’t need parchment paper.

PRO TIP. The darker the pan, the darker it’s going to make the cookie.

Heidi: We have now successfully decorated cut-out cookies and want to make sure we store them properly. If you aren’t going to serve them right away, how do you recommend storing them?

Dan: My mom has always been the cookie person in our family. She makes hundreds of cookies to give to people, and if she has any leftovers, she freezes them and they’re fine. They won’t have the same texture as if you ate them the day they were baked, but you can freeze them and pull them out a day before you want to serve them.

PRO TIP. When storing and packaging decorated cookies in tins or containers, place them on their sides. Put them side by side in a line, like soldiers. But remember, they do have to be completely dry!

Heidi: Thank you, Dan, for sharing your baking and decorating knowledge with us. It’s been fun “talking cookies” with you. You’re encouraging bakers of all skill levels to give homemade cut-out cookies with royal icing a try.

Dan: Absolutely! If you’re not completely secure with your decorating skills as far as technique and finesse, there are so many good products out there that you can use to make your cookies look great. If you have a free Saturday, and you take your time and don’t rush or panic if you make a mistake, you will enjoy baking and decorating. Remember even an ugly cookie is still a cookie! Grab some family and friends and have fun being creative and spending time together!

Here are some decorating ideas from Dan:

Decorate a Christmas Tree. Create the wall by outlining the shape of the tree first with a thin line. Flood the inside of the tree green. Decorate with candy pearls while the middle is setting.

Decorate a Snowman. Outline the bottom of the snowman and let it set. Outline the middle of the snowman and let it set. Outline the top of the snowman and let it set. When you flood the cookie, you’re flooding three separate sections, so it looks like 3 snowballs instead of one big snowman.

Decorate an Ornament. Use a circle cut-out for the cookie and make a small cut in the bottom of the piping bag. Use white royal icing to create an apostrophe shape in the upper right part of the cookie. Next, flood the rest of the cookie with red royal icing and sprinkle course red sugar that looks like glitter. The cookie will look like a shiny glittering ornament.

PRO TIP. The holidays are a perfect time to let products decorate for you. Use candy pearls, colored sugars, sprinkles, and glitter on your iced cookies.

Heidi Kutz

Education Specialist, ViaroHealth

For questions or comments, contact wellness@viarohealth.com.