Decorate Snowflake Cookies

What’s Christmas without snowflake cookies? Stencils make putting pictures in difficult places much easier; therefore, it is easy to decorate cookies with stencils.

Cut out a snowflake pattern in paper. You can always adjust the size of the snowflake stencil to the size of the cookie by reducing or enlarging on a copy machine. Trace the snowflake pattern onto a sheet of mylar, acetate or stencil film so that you will have a water proof stencil that you can wash and reuse. Cut the stencil from the mylar with a craft knife and clean thoroughly. Make sure all of the trace marks are gone.

Bake the cookies according to your favorite recipe. I used the boxed up ready to go version where I just need to add an egg. But if you are a skilled chef, go ahead and make your goodies from scratch. Sugar cookies work best because they have the smoothest surface after baking. A cookie with too much texture is not going to produce a good stenciled image. I like to slightly flatten the tops of the cookies right after they come out of the oven with a spatula. If the stencil can lay flat on the cookie you’ll get a much better image than if it has to roll over rounded edges. Let the cookies cool.

Prepare your “paint” by adding water to powdered (confectioners) sugar. The mixture should be thick enough to stick to the tip of your finger but thin enough that it will not make a permanent indent if you touch it. Make colors by adding food coloring.

Place the stencil on top of the cookie. Use a finger to dab the sugar mixture into the stencil openings. Just like with a regular stencil, use a dabbing or up and down motion to dot the surface with color and not a rubbing back and forth which will encourage color seeping under the stencil edges. In stenciling, you always want to use a little paint so that it does not seep under the stencil. No difference here. The best tool is an index finger to lightly dab the confectioners’ sugar and water mixture over the stencil opening.

Carefully remove the stencil by pulling directly up. You don’t want to drag the stencil over the wet color mixture which will smear the color.

And Voila! You have some tasty snowflake cookies!

It might take a little practice but remember you get to eat the mistakes.

You may want to make a different size cookie than the normal 2-1/2 or 3 inch circle. No problem! Just take the paper snowflake and reduce or enlarge the size to fit the area you want to place the picture. Then move on to the tracing. This is great if you want to make a large cookie cake too!

If you use a recipe for a highly textured cookie, like gingerbread, oatmeal or chocolate chip, you can put a base layer of powdered sugar and water to create a very smooth area and then stencil your image on that. Actually, that can just add to how creative you can be with decorating cookies with stencils. For example, you can put a background of a red or green circle on top of the cookie behind a white snowflake. Make sure that the first layer of color has dried thoroughly before adding your image.

If you can’t find mylar or acetate at your local craft supply store, try transparency films at an office supply house. Just make sure that the material will accept pen or ink so that you can trace on it and that it will be safe to use with food items. Also, you have a large number of suppliers of stencil films on line.

Hey, who wouldn’t like a basket full of festive snowflake cookies! They make great gifts for the neighbors.

Need some help cutting out a snowflake design? Well, we’ve just added eight snowflake designs in a unique downloadable book to The Stencil Store (see tab above). You can find the snowflakes in the Holidays Collection. Four of the designs are for snowflake cutouts and four are to make snowflake stencils. The book includes many projects for using these snowflake patterns including creating a 3-D centerpiece, decorating napkins and some thrifty gift making ideas.

Happy Stenciling,

Penny