I took a day to just poke around the craft stores and see what was new for this Chirstmas. I actually found lots of cute things, but my favorite was at JoAnn fabrics. I think they were Wilton (not sure though) and they were for baking cookies. They were round, dark metal, shallow little pans to bake a single cookie in. Each was about 6" across with a scalloped interior edge and a raised design of a Santa, gingerbread man, penquin, etc. When the cookies was turned out after baking, you had the design to paint or decorate. These would be soooo cute for individual cookies to package and sell/give as gifts. They were $19.95 each with 40% off but I really wanted a snowman which they didn't have. Have any of you seen these and have you used them yet? Happy Shopping!!!

I just bought the gingerbread house version.. I have never used anything like that before, so I put in extra dough to fill the cavity..MISTAKE.. just need to put in the 1/4 inch amount.. Took a few tries to get it right.. They are all very cute.

I don't have these pans, but I do have some character cutters from Williams-Sonoma that let you put an "imprint" of the character's face on the cookie before baking. While cute, I really didn't find them to be overly helpful as once you outline/flood the cookie the imprinted design is lost. It was helpful however for achieving good placement of the character's eyes as I left those un-flooded and filled them in later.

I saw the gingerbread pans in a catalog just today and they looked very cute with really minimal piped decoration. So, if you are thinking you'll just pipe accent icing on I'd say go for it! Otherwise, just be aware that you might lose your design under your pipe/flood icing. Good luck and let us know how it goes!