A few times a year when I was growing up, my mom would break out the cookie cutters and we’d decorate sugar cookies. But we never had icing bags or tubs of frosting—no, no, no. Instead, we were the only family I knew that specialized in no-frosting sugar cookies. How did we do it? (And how did the kids not complain about the lack of the crazy-sugary icing?) Two words: Painting cookies.
Yessssss.
Painting cookies always seemed like a big event. We’d sort through the mountain of semi-misshapen airplanes, giraffes, gingerbread men and stars, picking out the ones for my mom to use. (There was never any question whether we’d select the Mystery Cookie Cutter, which looked kind of like California and kind of like a stretched-out stocking, of course.) She would lay out the raw dough on cookie sheets, and we kids would go at ’em.
Fluorescent sprinkles, those silver balls that I’m pretty sure were supposed to be inedible, and red hots—which everyone liked to use but no one except my older sister liked to actually eat—were all fair game. And under it all was painting cookies, a Ryan family technique that involves just egg wash and food coloring for no-frosting sugar cookies. They were delicious and fun to make.
We’d sweep up silver balls and wipe up sprinkles for weeks to come, but the mess was always worth the fun. (Isn’t it always?) Read more