Hi all, I'm looking for some sugar cookie tips. I'm helping Habitat for Humanity with a charity cookie walk, but I've never met a homemade sugar cookie I liked (in taste or appearance). I'm going to try the NFSC recipe on CC, but how do I make them look good? I've seen some really gorgeous sugar cookies here- very "clean" (nothing like those BC-frosted sugar cookies my family gave to friends while I was growing up). I've seen some people talk about certain Glace icings they use, but is there one that is "standard" or kind of basic?

Also, what technique do you use? Is it complicated? After you've glazed them, do you have to decorate details in RI, or can you use more glace? Or does that just make a mess?

I'm new to all this, so the less complicated, the better.
Thanks in advance!

To me the easiest is to find a recipe that has a good flavor without needing icing and decorate them before you bake. You take some of the cookie dough and thin it out with water or milk to a pipeable consistency and add food color and pipe details onto the unbaked cookie--it will spread a tad in the oven so you wanna use real a fine point but those are the easiest by far to moi.

Or you could dip the bottom in chocolate too if the cookie needed a flavor boost.

I think the next easiest is to use the same cookie cutters to cut out either rolled fondant or rolled buttercream as you do to cut out the cookeis. Put the cut out rb or fondant in the freezer while cookies bake & place on cookie when it comes out of oven. Should stick if cookie is still hot. You could use piping gel if necessary to adhere to cookie, but I'd let them cool first to do that. Putting the cut outs in the freezer ensures they will not stretch out on you.

This is a good blog for learning.

http://sweetopia.net/

You could invest in Toba Garrett's book, Creative Cookies. It has everything -- recipes that are delicious, all types of icing you need, and all the techniques used on the pretty cookies you see on this site.

I use NFSC and Antonia74 Royal Icing. Been using Antonia74 Royal Icing for sugar cookie since. I don't have any picture of my cookies since right when I have my camera ready, they've been eaten already.

Thanks for the helpful tips. Now let's see if I can actually produce something worth looking at.

I didn't get the hang of outlining and flooding until the second time I tried it. If you have time, try half now and half later.