Friday, May 16, 2008

Bake. Decorate. Donate. Cookies!


Making and decorating cookies -– and donating the cookies to a local food pantry, emergency shelter or senior center -- is a wonderful and fun activity you can do with your kids, your friends, your co-workers, your worship group, or your neighbors.

Cookies make people smile at any time of year. Just last week, I hosted a cookie decorating event, called Drop In & Decorate, at my house. In one afternoon, we decorated 250 cookies and donated them to a shelter for women who are homeless or victims of abuse.

What better gift to give on Mother’s Day -- or July 4, or Canada Day, or any day?

The idea behind Drop In & Decorate is that people get together for the fun part – the decorating. Do the baking ahead of time, or better yet, ask your friends to bake a dozen cookies and bring them to the party.


I use a basic sugar cookie recipe with Royal Icing. The cookies are easy to roll out and cut with large (3-4 inch) cookie cutters and baked up to a week in advance.

This year I experimented with squeeze bottles for the icing, which worked really well. My husband built a holder for them out of a piece of scrap wood. He drilled holes, so the bottles could stand nozzle-side down (avoiding the air bubbles that formed when the bottles stood upright for any length of time), and for legs he used recycled parts from our printer cartridges!

Pastry bags are easy to use for decorating, and give a great amount of control. We’ve had children as young as age 3 use them for decorating.


For more information about how to host your own cookie decorating party, along with our cookie and icing recipes, tips and sources, and lots of cookie ideas, visit the Drop In & Decorate blog.




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This Post was written by Lydia from The Perfect Pantry

12 comments:

  1. lovely cookies abby!!well decorated..so cute too:)

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  2. a lovely gesture and a fantastic idea...the cookies look perfect!

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  3. So cute cookies ..Lydia ..
    Its great U had a smiles spreading event like this ..
    hugs and smiles
    jaya

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  4. I always find the Drop in and decorate idea heart warming but seeing that cute cookie and the thought of your husband making the squeezy bottle stand/holder made it even more so.

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  5. Squeeze bottle is a neat idea. Very creative.

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  6. what a great idea for a party! love the duckie! :)

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  7. squeeze bottles!! that's a cool tip Lydia:) the cookies look so cute!

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  8. Thank you, everyone! Wish you could all be here to decorate cookies with us. This was my seventh Drop In & Decorate party -- lots of new people came this time, and they all did a wonderful decorating job. The squeeze bottles worked well, especially for the first-timers who weren't as accustomed to using pastry bags.

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  9. What a tremendous idea - you got my wheels in motion - and I just love the contraption your husband made - it's perfect.

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  10. That's really good. So nice of u. Nice work. Even i would like to make cookies and donate. By the way, lovely cookies...

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  11. This still has to be one of the best ideas out there. You are making such a difference, Lydia!

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