It’s Our Christmas Cookie Decorating Party!

Each Christmas season, we host a small Christmas cookie decorating party. It’s become an annual tradition that we really look forward to. Over the years we’ve found ways to make this party a lot easier to pull off, so I’m sharing my best cookie decorating party tips and tricks here.

Be sure to check out our past cookie decorating parties here and here. And if you want absolutely everything I can teach you about Christmas cookie decorating parties in one handy spot, pick up a copy of my newly updated Christmas Cookie Decorating Party Plan. 

Christmas cookie decorating party decorations

Sounds strange, but I always pick up party decoration inspiration from a roll of wrapping paper. I’ve found out the easiest way to make this party festive and to make for fast cleanup is to choose a roll of wide, thick wrapping paper. My first choice is always the brand Brothers & Sisters because it’s high-quality and they have such cute patterns. They also have a handy grid on the back that makes it easy to cut the paper straight.

I use the wrapping paper as a table runner down the middle of my table and also on my sideboard. This year’s wrapping paper has red and green holly berries that made it easy to choose red and green accents for the rest of the party.

Christmas cookie decorating party centerpiece 

I like to create a centerpiece that is low and doesn’t take up a lot of room so we can talk across the centerpiece. It’s easy to just put Christmas ornaments in a compote bowl, but this year I decided to arrange red, green and white flowers in an oval vase. (Catch the bowl of ornaments on our sideboard.)

These are all grocery store flowers, and definitely an arrangement that you could re-create at home. Look at this post and this one for tips on creating party centerpieces. Our flowers included roses, pompons, Hypericum, Astors, carnations and mums and cost just $46.

For this party, I also typically pull out my mother-in-law‘s giant ceramic Santa, which is basically another vase, and created a smaller, similar floral arrangement in his Santa sack.

Christmas cookie decorating place settings

Our place settings are pretty simple and honestly, it’s easy to coordinate your tablescape when you stick to your party colors and themes. Since I was pulling from the wrapping paper (AKA table runner!), our colors were white, red and green and our theme was holly berries and leaves. That made choosing the table elements simple.

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• Red aprons
• White hand towel with red stripe
• White tray for decorating
• Paper holly plate for eating
• Red scalloped napkins
• Green scalloped napkins

I used my gold-tone flatware, ironstone coffee cups and saucers and then just added red soda bottles.

Christmas cookie decorating party food

I always schedule this party at lunchtime and so I serve a light lunch — something that’s easy for us to munch on while we decorate our cookies. This year we have a lot going on and so I just ordered Grilled Chicken and Strawberry Salads from a local restaurant then decanted them into my trifle bowl. I served the salad with a hardy bread.

Decorating cookies for a couple hours will for sure make you want to eat sugar, and so I had a cake made at our Publix bakery. They call it the Candy Bark Dream Cake.

Often I make a batch of hot cider and another of Crockpot hot chocolate, but this year I found cute cocoa bombs at Sprouts and thought they would be an easier way to go. We had we were able to choose from dark chocolate peppermint, caramel milk chocolate, and white peppermint chocolate. All I had to do was warm milk and then serve personalized hot chocolate as guests were ready for a cup.

Prepping Christmas cookies & Icing

We always make three types of cookies: sugar, chocolate, and gingerbread. I found great recipes that do not spread. We use this recipe for gingerbread and this recipe for sugar cookies and this recipe for chocolate cookies.

We make the cookies a day or two before the party.

For icing, we use this recipe from Wilton because you can make it with meringue powder and so you don’t have to worry about possible contamination from raw egg whites. You also can make the icing in advance, store it in the fridge, and then pull it out about an hour before your party.

How to decorate Christmas cookies

While you could certainly have this party in your kitchen, I find it easier to set everything up on my dining room table, and that way we can sit and chat and eat while we decorate.

Each year, we make improvements and this year’s improvements were thick cardboard trays that were perfect for decorating on. We also invested in squeeze bottles, which made our flood icing a lot easier to deal with. The thicker icing we kept in icing bags. Make sure you invest in a good quality icing bag, so you don’t have any explosions while you’re decorating.

I also always keep my sprinkles in mini mason jars (4 oz size) because they’re easier to store that way since they stack. Provide demitasse spoons to get the sprinkles out of the jars. We share the sprinkle jars and the icing around the table.

As each person finishes a tray of cookies, we can offload the trays to the kitchen and set down a new disposable tray for their next batch of cookies. 

It’s nice to provide your guests a handy way to take their cookies home. The dollar store is a good source of cookie tins or you can use gable boxes, which is what I did this year with a little bit of red baker’s twine. Separate the layers of cookies with parchment paper.

I hope that gives you some ideas about how to pull off your own cookie decorating party. Don’t forget I’ve got loads more tips trucks and helpful shopping links in my Christmas Cookie Decorating Party Plan.

(A version of this post originally appeared on Design Dazzle.)

party vendors:

• Party styling: The Party Teacher
• Photography: Barefeet Imagery
• Red aprons: Amazon
• White hand towel with red stripe: Amazon
• Paper holly plates: Tacky Nut Party Store on Etsy
• Red scalloped dinner napkins: Amazon
• Green scalloped cocktail napkins: Juvale on Amazon
• Gable boxes: Amazon
• Mini mason jars (4 oz size): Amazon
• Demitasse spoons: Amazon
• Thick cardboard trays: Amazon
• Squeeze bottles: Amazon
• Icing bags: Wilton on Amazon

The Party Teacher is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.