Baking Day

Yesterday, I joined my baker-extraordinaire aunt, grandma and cousin for some Christmas cookie baking. A good time was had by all, with much sampling and taste-testing. You know how it is so very hard to cleanly frost sugar cookies? Well, my aunt taught me a great technique which completely avoids messiness; it's called Flooding.

Here's what you do: make your white royal icing-like frosting, and decide which colors you want. Divide the frosting and mix your colors; then, for each color, divide it in half. Now, add a little water to one half of the mix to make it a little thinner, so that it's easily pourable. Put it into a squirt bottle. Put the thicker frosting into a pastry tube for piping. You're ready to frost: pipe around the edges of the cookie with the thicker colored frosting, then, using the thinner mix, pour some into the center of the cookie. In other words, "flood" the middle of the cookie, and, using a toothpick, spread it out to your piped barrier. It is really so cool.

If you want to add more piped decorations on top, wait for the frosting to dry. You can tell it's dry when the surface turns from shiny to matte-looking. Have fun!