Tools To Make Decorating Beautiful Cookies Easy!

One of the great passions of my life is decorating cookies. I love finding excuses to raid my cookie cabinet where I’ve collected all the tools I need to make beautiful royally iced cookies.

It’s taken a fair amount of time to test different products and find the cookie decorating tools that work and are work spending the money on and which ones you can easily live without!

So if you are just beginning to learn how to decorate cookies or are looking for a way to make your cookie decorating more efficient these are my go-to tools every single baking endeavor!

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Rolling Pin Guides

It took me FAR too long to discover this EASY trick when it should have been common sense:

Beautiful sugar cookies start with an even base!

Not only does it make cutting then moving the cookies WAY easier but it allows the flood icing to cascade evenly across the cookies without pooling or dripping off.

A Spray Bottle

It’s amazing how something SO simple that you probably already have around your house can make such a big difference.

I use my spray bottle a few different ways throughout my cooking baking process.

– To “knock” excess powdered ingredients into the mixing bowl if they get stuck along the sides.

– To dilute my royal icing into the correct consistencies.

– To moisten paper towels to keep piping tips from drying out.

Spray bottles are ideal because you can easily control how much liquid you are adding and don’t run the risk of adding too much.

Cooling Racks

Maybe you guys are just far better bakers than I was in the beginning, but I thought it was okay to let cookies cool on the baking pan for the 22 years or so of my life .

However it was only after finally investing in a few cooling racks I noticed what a HUGE difference they make in your finished project.

I hated pulling perfectly baked cookies out of the oven only for the edges to turn crispy and brittle or the bottoms to burn.

Cooling racks keep your cookies beautiful by removing them from the heat source so they stop baking when they should!

High Quality Gel Food Coloring

The brand of food coloring you use makes a huge difference in how your cookies turn out.

Quality gel food coloring makes it easier to create vibrant colors. The cheap watery food coloring may seem like a great idea until you have poured your entire bottle into your white icing only to be left with pink icing instead of red or grey instead of black. Save yourself the pain because in my experience 2-3 drops of the good stuff is equivalent to 20-30 of the cheaper stuff.

Dropper Bottles keep the mess at bay. Even some gel food colorings are easier to use than others. I have found that food coloring in dropper bottles are much more user friendly and create far less mess than those in tubs.

Piping Bags

While you CAN use plastic baggies with the end cut off, it is so much harder to achieve beautiful results that way.

Piping bags allow you control over pressure which helps you create a uniformly piped outline, another necessary foundation for a beautifully decorated cookie.

The best part? You can even use disposable piping bags multiple times if you wrap your icing in saran wrap first!

Piping Bag Ties

I won’t lie for the longest time I used rubber bands or even hair ties to keep my piping bags closed then I bought these and now wish I could buy them in bulk.

Piping bag ties help keep the pressure consistent and their design allows you to easily move them as you use the royal icing.

They are fairly cheap and are SO worth the few bucks if you plan on decorating cookies, just be sure to keep them in a designated container because out of all my baking gadgets these are the ones that get lost the most.

Piping Couplers

These are pretty much as essential as it gets but I wanted to include them for good measure for the newbies to the joy of cookie decorating!

Piping tip couplers allow you to securely attach the piping tip to the piping bag.

They consist of two parts one of which you put inside of the piping bag, then the second is a ring you screw on after you put the piping tip on.

Piping Tips

One of the best investments I made in my cookie decorating adventures was my Wilton piping tip set, I love having the tip for ANY occasion when I want to let my creativity run wild.

But in reality you only really NEED a few piping tips to get started!

#1 Piping tip for small details/ writing.

#2 Piping tips for outlining

#349 piping tip if you want to make small leaves

Condiment Bottles

These are by far the EASIEST way to flood cookies. Just fill them up with your flood icing and you are ready to fill in your outlined spaces.

If you run out of time you can rinse the top out, cover the bottle with a damp paper towel and saran wrap, screw the top back on, pop it in the fridge and it will be good for a day or two!

Scriber Needle

If you plan on making detailed cookies a cookie pick is a MUST.

It can be used to fill in small gaps of the flood icing, pop any small bubbles that are visible, swirl icing for unique patterns, and to add small details like the glimmer of light in eyes.

It is BY far one of the most versatile baking tools I own.