I was asked to give a cookie decorating demonstration. It is for home bakers, just looking for cute ideas. It will not be hands on- i will model.
What aspects do you think I should include? The demonstration is supposed to be a half hour.
Thanks in advance!

LeahK, the half hour will fly by! I recommend you choose ONE cookie technique, e.g., fondant covered, flood work, etc. Have several completely decorated examples of the technique you are showing. Allow 20-25 minutes to demonstrate and 5 minutes for questions from the group. Good luck!

Take a tip from those who host cooking shows, have some cookies ready at different stages. Have one "naked" cookie ready to be covered, one covered cookie ready to be detailed, and one detailed cookie ready to be outlined. You can also have one previously finished cookie done at home so that you'll have an example of what it will look like before you start.

I did this when I taught a MOPs group how to make a graham cracker and cereal "ginger bread" house with their toddlers over the holidays. Having it done in stages gave me the ability to get it assembled and decorated in the time frame alloted as well as answer questions and tell a few memories I have of making these with my mom, and later with my children.

Tell them of a way that they can have cookies the same thickness is by rolling them out with dowel on the side or what ever method you use.

If you are using icing I would also include
- how to thin or thicken the icing
how to store the icing
how long for the icing to dry on the cookie

As mentioned earlier have just a cookie , then a cookie with icing and another with details to show the stages the cookies goes through

Then at the end maybe have different cookie displays showing them different ideas such as putting a stick in a cookie and baking could make this ( have a cookie bouquet) or have a cookie that is wrapped in a celo bag with cute ribbons in a mug with a tea bag and the whole thing in a celo bag and say how you can make it into c cute simple gift, and have maybe a theme such as have cookes that are decorated into flip flops on a cute plate that has crushed grahm crackers to represent sand.
By showing them the possibilities are endless will also inspire them.

Those were both great Ideas.
I would just keep it simple using a basic Royal Icing becuase that is what a everyday person would me more most likely to already have at home or would be easy to make instead of buying a expensive tub of fondant.
I would have 1-3 diff colors of icing ready to go or just 2 and have it thick enough to be able to outline an flood with the same icing. After the class you can give two basic recipe handouts away maybe all on 1 sheet the Royal Icing & a cookie recipe.

hey suHwa this is off topic but i met my bf at a mops group-i have some great friends and a fantastic church family because of mops-just wanted to share. now, back to topic i agree, treat it like a martha show and have cookies in stages and definately some finished ones to illustrate better and i would maybe use the flooding technique it seems to be pretty popular and straight forward. have fun oh, maybe bring some pics of cookies you decorated using the same way and some with fondant (could be the opening of another class )

thanks everyone for the suggestions.
i had planned on having cookies in various stages- i think that's the only way to actually pull this off!
my idea was to include the following:
rolling out dough evenly
inserting sticks for bouquets
decorating

this is where i'm stuck. i vastly prefer toba's glace icing, but mine usually has white dots when it dries. but i find royal icing too hard. i was thinking of playing around with corn syrup amts so it wouldn't be as solid. any suggestions on that?

within decorating how should i do it- focus on one technique, or quickly rattle off a bunch?

thanks again for all your help!

you can give kitchengifts.com website as a ref

http://www.kitchengifts.com/
They have tutorials

have you tried antonia's RI? it dries hard but you can still bite it without breaking your teeth-i swear by it now!!

I am not sure who it is on theis site that has added white drops from
Americolor and it helps not have the spots or discoloring that can sometimes happen. Maybe search toba in the cookie forum and it will come up.

I think Karens cookies has a recipe that uses a bit of shortening with egg whites and it tastes great. Sets hard so you can stack but lovely and soft and everyone should have the ingredients. She has tutorials as well as kitchen gifts. Love both sites for cookies.

toba herself told me about using the white food coloring to help take care of the spots. i think you could be ok using the glace icing. if it were a hands on i might say no, just because it takes forever to dry. with decorating...i would probably stick to one technique. you can add more near the end depending on how interested they seem or how smooth things are going. you could have several different cookies already done with different techniques just in case. and i would definately put things in there even before the decorating...dough, rolling, baking.
make a batch of cookies. write things down as you go along trying to take note of things you might think people would need to know. you might come across things you hadn't thought of.
good luck