How to decorate the edges of a cookie

It’s fun to decorate the edges of a cookie; you can do that with refrigerator cookies.

Cookies with minimal spread work best for decorating. Look for recipes that have a higher flour to sugar ratio or for those without leavening, for best results. (Refrigerator cookies with a high sugar content are usually light and crisp because the sugar in the dough melts in the heat of the oven. Cookies without leavening tend to be rich and shortbread like but decorate nicely. The Festive Fruit and Oat Cookies and The Coconut Cranberry Cookies are perfect for edge decorating.)

Use large colored sugar crystals, turbinado sugar, decorating sprinkles, decorating jimmies, crushed candies, or nuts. Simply roll the log of dough in the decorating materials prior to slicing the cookies. If you roll the log with the sugar or other decorations in waxed paper or parchment paper, you can press them into the surface of the dough.

Some instructors use an egg white wash to assure that the candies stick to the log. Except for nuts, we don’t. We don’t find it necessary and the moisture from the egg white tends to melt the candies or sugar crystals into a blurry mess.

To showcase the edges, we usually cut the slices just a bit thicker before baking. We color white sugar crystals any color we like by mixing a few drops of food coloring with the crystals. You can buy large bags of white crystals to make a collection of different colors.

Turbinado is an excellent coating sugar with its amber color and large crystals. Learn more about turbinado sugar.

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