I have hosted several Christmas Cookie Exchanges in the past, but this past week I was a guest to one. I was finally in the running to try to win a prize so I needed to pick an award winning cookie recipe: thus I made these Holiday Cookies: Decorated Sugar Cookies.

One of the main reasons was I could bake the shapes and freeze them a few weeks before the party and then decorate them the day before. Don’t share my secret but I used a sugar cookie mix since I just needed two dozen cookies!

Homemade sugar cookie recipes are pretty amazing but I would save those for another time when I wasn’t spending a few hours decorating. I adapted the recipe from Taste of Home – 365 Days of Cookies Book. 

FUN ELF on the Shelf SUGAR COOKIES

The key to these adorable elves is a diamond cookie cutter. The one I had was scalloped but a smaller straight edge one would be better. 

You can bake the cookies, allow them to cool and then freeze until you are ready to decorate. 

I used packaged cookie icing for these but if you are making several unique colors, definitely make your own royal icing.   

The best way to decorate a bunch of cookies is to set out the sprinkles for eyes, noses etc out for easy access. 

Holiday Cookies: Decorated Sugar Cookies

Allow the royal icing to dry completely, a few hours, before you attempt to put these in storage containers. 

 

Depending on how the cookies baked, some came out as Elves. 

 

While others looked more like reindeer. Use almond slivers for the ears. 

 

This is an award winning cookie, well for the local cookie exchange I attended. Well worth it as I am sure the young kids will love to take a bite out of some of their favorite holiday characters. 

Pin this when you are ready to start baking your Christmas Cookies.

With some of these extra cookie dough scraps I made some simple stars to decorate the platter.