oh i love all the cute cookies,,, I want to jump in and try decorating cookies,, I may have already asked before, but here goes again,,,, what recipe do you recommend for first time try on cookie decorating.. what about the little tubes of colored icing in the stores,, are those good for outlining and decorating on cookies.. thanks,, you "cookie clubbers" do such a great job with the cookies every month. I love looking through to see what everybody came up with..

The No Fail Sugar Cookies on this site are really easy and reliable. I don't really care for royal icing, so I use Alice's cookie icing, and sometimes fondant. I don't especially care for the squeezy tubes of stuff at the grocery store either, but that's just me. Anything is worth a try once!

Here's a link to the No Fail Sugar Cookies and Chocolate Rolled Cookies:

http://www.kitchengifts.com/nofailsugarcookies.html

http://www.kitchengifts.com/chocolatecookies.html

I know the No Fails are a big hit here w/everyone so you could try those first and see how you like them.

I haven't used the tube icing so I'm not sure how that would work but I know other CC members could definitely help you out on that subject! Good luck and can't wait to see your cookies!

Antonia74 has written a great tutorial called "How to bake & decorate cookies". Just click on the Articles tab above, scroll to the bottom of the page.

She gives the recipes she uses and also the method to create her cookies. I love her icing recipe and have made many batches of them, all of which have been enthusiastically gobbled up by friends, family and customers.

It's a good place to start, IMO, and then you can experiment with different types of icing and different cookie recipes if you want to.

hth!
Laura.