Cookie recipes, baking tips and cookie decorating ideas

This is basically Wilton's recipe for poured fondant icing, with a bit of flavoring added to make it more appealing. The icing should be thin enough to pour, but not so thin it runs off the cookie. This dries to a nice glossy finish that can be painted or decorated with sugar. The recipe can easily be doubled.

Royal icing is the glue or mortar of the decorating world. It flows smoothly and dries very hard, which makes it ideal for gingerbread house construction and intricate details such as latticework and script. It should not be used in place of regular icing, since it is hard and not very tasty. This is the traditional recipe with egg white. Because raw eggs can harbor salmonella, use the white from a pasteurized egg if you plan to eat the finished product. Pasteurized eggs are available in many supermarkets.

You can buy “vanilla” sugar in many supermarkets, but it’s artificially flavored, which to us seems to miss the whole point of using vanilla sugar in the first place. It takes a couple of weeks to produce real vanilla sugar, but it’s worth every minute of the wait. You can use this in place of regular sugar in just about any cookie where you want an extra boost of vanilla.

Also known as browned butter, beurre noisette, or ghee, burnt butter is simply butter that is cooked until the milk solids brown and the oil in the butter turns a deep golden color. It has a marvelous, toasted-nut flavor.

Lemon butter—or lemon curd, as it is more commonly known—is a staple of the British Isles, and has been a staple in my family as well, through at least five generations on my mother's side. Intensely lemony, lemon curd is a luscious accompaniment to any good butter cookie, especially shortbread. My grandmother also used to serve it with gingerbread.

This glaze is designed to be "painted" onto cookies after they're baked and cooled. It's great for kids; just divide the glaze up among several small pots or the compartments of an ice cube tray, and let them paint away.

This glaze is designed to be brushed on cookies before or during baking. It produces vibrant, glossy colors.

Meringue powder, available in most shops that carry cake decorating supplies, is mostly a combination of powdered egg white and cornstarch. It's very stable and works well in both royal and buttercream icings.