Hosting a Stress-Free Cookie Decorating Party

Ever want to host a holiday party but then you remember: You'll have to clean the house, buy food, prepare the food, serve the food, hope your guests like the food, clean up any potential messes made and in doing so, pretend like you're not even a little sad your favorite *insert item here* got broken or stained? Don't get me wrong, I love to host people in my home and am happily prepared for all of the above scenarios. But sometimes stress-free is nice! Enter the cookie decorating party.

I really believe a lot of whether hosting is stressful or not is up to you and even who you choose to bring into your home. Recently, I had a cookie decorating party with a few of my friends, and it was so fun. The best part is, making a mess is half the point here! So prepare to snack on some sprinkles and sneak a little frosting; you're certainly invited.

Here are my stress-free cookie decorating party (phew, that's a mouthful!) suggestions:

Like I mentioned, embrace the mess! But I've got a few tips to avoid getting royal icing all over everything. You can put piping bags on a dish when they're not in-use, in case they leak out the top (they likely will). I also had some luck with putting a few colors of icing in plastic condiment bottles, which are surprisingly easy to work with. The only con to some of the plastic bottles is you won't be able to get as fine of detail work from it, depending on the size of the cap. Go simple with decor, and don't over think it! The cookies will add enough visual interest to your table.

Ask all of your guests to bring a certain amount of cookies (for this event with just a few friends, I asked them to bring 12). That way, you're not having to bake a billion cookies, and you'll get more variety in flavors, style and cute cookie cutters! A good way to determine how many cookies to have each pal to bring is to decide what number of decorated cookies you'd like everyone to leave with. Then, ask everyone to bring that number. You can trade around cookies so each person has enough of a fun variety to decorate! It's always a good idea to have another batch on-hand, but this will save you a lot of baking and kitchen time.

In my opinion, wax paper is the best for fielding potential icing explosions. It's easy to use, nonstick and when you're finished, you can just toss it for easy cleanup. I put some paper placemats under the wax paper for this event, but I also think it could be cute to layer wax paper on brown craft paper.

Have some salty snacks and beverages available to help cope with the sugar rush. Cheese is always a good idea, in my opinion. ☺️And... that's about it! 

I hadn't really decorated cookies since I was a kid, and it's SO much more fun when you're an adult with better fine motor skills, ha! It's also super inspiring if your friends are as artistic as mine.

Most of the cookies in these photos were decorated by Kelsey Baldwin, who you can read more about here. (She's amazing!)

P.S. I wouldn't say I'm an expert on royal icing cookies, but I used this recipe for my sugar cookies and this one for my icing. I had to add quite a bit of water to the icing recipe to get it to be the right texture.