A local church has asked me to demonstrate decorating cookies or cakes at a ladies get-together. I've chosen cookies, but have never done anything like this before. Have any of you? Do you have any tips? I only have 30-45 min. I think I'll show them how to decorate with fondant as the base, but what else might I do?

it'd be neat to teach flooding with royal icing. most people have those ingredients at home, but fondant might be a little intimidating.

I'd keep it very simple and something that people could do easily at home with out having to buy a bunch of stuff.

I was asked to do a demo for a Ladies group here in town. Since it was around Valentine's day, I showed how to cover a cake in poured ganache and dipped strawberries in the ganache to place on top.

30-45 mins sounds like a lot of time, but when you are showing something, talking at the same time and having people ask questions it goes by really fast.

Oh I missed where you said cookies.

Okay, so I had to do a demo at Michaels last month, and I was being cheap so I went to walmart and bought store bought sugar cookies. It was a package of a dozen for like $2. I was told they were good too.

At the store I took royal icing, colored it in red, pink and purple. Outlined in the thick and thinened some down to flood the cookies. I got a big responce on the cookies, even though they were completely simple to make. Let me find a picture.

Hopefully this link works...

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30696003&l=454a5f881a&id=1515707372

I did the hearts by piping a dot of the thinned royal on top of the flooded in area (you have to to it right after you fill it in) and then took a crosage pin and dragged it through the dot, which formed the heart.

For the flower/spiral ones, I piped the thin royal in circles, then went around pullint the icing from the center out evenly spaced around, then came back in and did for the outside in. I thought they turned out really neat looking.

Thank you for the responses. TexasSugar-- that's kind of a "semi-homemade" way to do it. It shows them they can embellish store bought. Good idea and cute cookies!

That was one of those says where I didn't have much time the night before to bake, and I didn't have the mental energy go to out all at the demo. And I can tell you I had more people stop and oh and ah over those cookies than they usually do when I am doing other stuff.

Thanks!

Perhaps one of the easiest methods to teach, and one that gets a lot of positive responses, is tye-dye. There's no outlining, and no right or wrong. Just pipe on some different colors, take a toothpick, and start swirling! Works with any shaped cookie, too!