Ideas to decorate your gingerbread cookies

I shared my all-time favourite gingerbread cookie recipe with you all here on my blog last year. It's a super easy recipe that has been a great success in our family for years now.
If you would love to know more about the recipe, click here to read.

When I was growing up, I used to help my mum with the baking and even at that time, I stayed away from the cooking part. I loved rolling out the dough and cut them into pretty Christmas shapes. Like snowflakes, snowman, Santa Claus, the all-time favourite Gingerman and baubles. Gingerbread cookies are not only delicious with a sweet and spiced combination, but I also love that it keeps its shape while baking, so it's super easy to decorate it.
Today I'm going to share with you a few tips and give you some fun gingerbread cookie decorating ideas.

Royal Icing

The traditional way when it comes to decorating gingerbread cookies is icing, so obviously, this cannot be missed from the list. It dries firm, and it's the perfect glue when you are building a gingerbread house.
Royal icing is a very simple and plain icing made from only three ingredients egg white, powdered sugar and milk. You can replace the milk with water if you wish.

Royal icing recipe:
2 cups icing sugar (sifted)
1 egg white
milk/water (if needed to thin the icing)

Instruction:
Whisk the egg white in a medium-sized bowl, or you can use a stand mixer too. While whisking add the sifted icing super until it reaches a smooth consistency. If you find the icing too thick, just add some milk/water. Make sure you add 1 tsp at a time.
On the other hand, if your icing is too thin, add more sugar.

Once you reached a pipeable consistency spoon the icing into a piping bag with a really thin nozzle. Now you are ready to decorate. Be careful not to overload your cookies with it.
The best part about icing is that you can easily colour the icing with food colouring
to create any festive-themed cookies.
I usually decorate them with the colours I use for the Christmas tree.
This year I will be following a Winter wonderland theme with silver, white and a hint of blue.

Fondant
Another super easy and fun way to decorate your gingerbread cookies is with fondant.
It's actually one of the fastest ways to make your cookies stand out from the batch.
I use the same cookie cutter to cut the shape that I used on the cookie this way it will perfectly fit on the cookie. I like this trick because it makes the cookies to look neat.
You can use this as a blank canvas on it to start your decorating instead of the beige gingerbread colour.

Candies
I love buying all sort of festive candies just as much as decorating with them. Super easy to add a few details to your cookies with candies.
There are two ways you can add them.
Before baking and after you took them out of the oven. If you wish to follow the first method, just press your candies into the cookie dough before you place them in the oven. You might find that some of these candies will be affected by the heat. Bake a practise cookie with different sort of sweets and see whichever is the best when it comes to baking with them if you wish to decorate after you took them out of the oven I usually use royal icing as a glue and stick them on the fresh cookies.
To see the recipe for the icing scroll up.

Edible silver flakes
For this method, I glue white fondant as a blank canvas on the gingerbread cookie before I start to decorate it with silver flakes. I use a small paintbrush to dip in the flakes and then dab it on the edge or the middle of the cookie.

3d Christmas Rolling pin
To make the cookies stand out, I like to use an embossed rolling pin.
There are plenty of different designs on Amazon and eBay.
Click here to see some.
The design on the rolling pin instantly transfers to the dough or the fondant. I usually use on both of them depends if I'm going to decorate the cookie even more or leave it simply with the design on the dough.
This can completely transform the look of your bakes.

Glitter
Glitter can be used in so many different ways. By adding to the icing sugar then draw any design you wish. Your limit is the sky.
Sprinkle some of it on the cookie or dip a paintbrush in the tin and dab some on the whole cookie or just the edges.

These are my favourite ways of decorating homemade gingerbread cookies. It is so satisfying seeing those plain cookies get a colourful coat on.

What's your tips and tricks when it comes to decorating gingerbread cookies?
Would love to see your freshly baked goodies, so don't forget to tag me on Instagram @delilapipoly.

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Happy Holidays everyone!

See you next time,