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This Christmas, my family decided to do something we had not done for nearly 20 years: paint cookies. Instead of using our traditional recipe for painted sugar cookies, one of my sisters purchased ready made dough. They tasted a little better, but were harder to paint than I remember.

For “paint” we use food coloring, keeping the cookie edible. We make the colors from powdered food coloring, for the most part, because it allows control of the viscosity of the paint. (That is a big word meaning thickness, but I’m an engineer so just deal with it.) Black is one color where it is less work to almost have a thick paste, rather than a traditional thin liquid. Roll out some dough, use cookie cutters with some guidance with the pieces to paint. You are better to have a little thicker dough than thin, because it assures that the features are transfered to the cut cookie.

Start with the base colors and let dry for a while. Then finish with the black outlining. If you do outlining first, you will likely contaminate your lighter colors with the black food coloring. If you don’t wait for the colors to dry somewhat, it is harder to keep the outlining uniform. This is the best type of painting, because mistakes taste good.