Top 5 Last Minute Holiday Cookie Speed Decorating Tips
Already convinced yourself there's no time left to make beautiful iced cookies before your self-inflicted holiday "deadline" date? Sorry to disappoint, but as we learned from Philip Moreau, owner of the wholesale cookie company Monaco Baking in Santa Fe Springs (known online as Cookie Gallery retail), it's all about how you approach the decorating side of the equation. He's gotten "speed decorating" down to a science (let's hope no reality TV execs are reading this). And damn it, those cookies look better than most that we've spent hours on. 
jgarbee Gingerbread Houses At Monaco Baking
Moreau's factory produces (very quickly) millions of hand-iced cookies and gingerbread houses each year for everyone from Williams-Sonoma to Harry & David, with Neiman Marcus couture mark-ups and Home Shopping Network discount deals in between. Talk about brilliant marketing -- everything is handmade from the same dough. Capitalist cookies at their finest, if you will. Get speed decorating tips from Moreau after the jump.
5. Space. Your kitchen counter, a dining room table, any place where you can lay out your trays of cookies or gingerbread house parts like an assembly line. No room? The perfect excuse to call up your friend with the killer kitchen. Or sure, lay down a tarp on your apartment sidewalk.
jgarbee Gingerbread Houses And Toy Trains In Progress
4. Shape. This is no time to be democratic, as all that jumping back and forth between Santa and his 12 reindeer slows things down. Pick two or three shapes you like and use those rather than pulling out every cookie cutter you own (you can change things up as you decorate). When you decorate, stick to one cookie shape at a time, too. So, if you're making candy canes and Santas this year, start by dipping all the candy canes at once before you give Santa his due diligence. 
jgarbee Icing, Prepped And Ready
3. Fill Colors. Prep all of your icings (fill colors and piping colors) before you start decorating. Always start with your "fill" color rather than outlining the cookie with the stiffer piped icing first, says Moreau. Pick up a cookie, dip the top side in a bowl filled with your colored royal icing and quickly move on to the next one (easier said than done to keep the icing from running over the edges). The fill icing shouldn't be too stiff, more the consistency of molasses, so it spreads evenly over the cookie. 
jgarbee Dip The Fill Color First
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