1. Inside out.  Add colorful crushed candies (like peppermints or candy-coated chocolate candies) to the dough and bake your decoration inside the cookie!  Break up Pillsbury’s refrigerated cookie dough into a bowl and stir in the candies.

2. Intense Colors.  Forget the drop-by-drop color that usually turns cookie dough into a sad, pale color. You need concentrated gel or paste food colors found at baking stores or online. The concentrated colors will brighten any dough to super intense hues.

3. Swirl It.   Roll out cookie dough, roll it and slice it! Stack two together and then roll…you’ll get a pretty spiral design.  Try one of these seasonal recipes for starters:  Gingerbread Pinwheels or Red and Green Holiday Pinwheels.

4. Cookie ropes.  Bake up some playful childhood memories and roll dough into long snakes. Then make fun shapes, like pretzels, braids, or swirls.  For starters, try Swirly Tree Cookies and Spiral Snowman Cookies.

5. Roll it in sugar!  Ball-shaped cookies are made for rolling in colored sugar, powdered sugar, cocoa, cinnamon-sugar...your choices are endless.  Roll the cookies when they’re set, but still a little warm, and the coating will stick better.

6. Dip it.  Melt 1 cup chocolate chips in a microwaveable bowl or cup with about 1 tablespoon shortening, stirring every 15 seconds or so until the chocolate is soft.  Stir until smooth and dip one edge of your cookies in chocolate and let it set on a cooling rack.  Put a sheet of wax paper under the rack to catch drips.

7. Sprinkle it. Frosted or not, simple colorful sugars take a cookie from plain to sparkling. Decorate immediately after removing from the oven.

8. Drizzle it.  In a resealable food storage freezer bag, add 1 cup of chocolate chips. Microwave until the chocolate is soft, checking every 15 seconds. Squeeze the bag, mixing the chocolate until melted. Make a tiny snip in one corner (we mean tiny!)  and squeeze chocolate designs or drizzles on your cookies. Look at you go, pro!

9. Stencil it.  Cut out a simple paper design that is small enough to fit on a cookie, like a tree, snowman, or snowflake. Set it on the cookie, and shake powdered sugar over it. Lift the paper and your cookies with a tweezers and you’ll have a reverse design. This also works great with a paper doily – fancy in about 3 seconds.

10. Outline it.  Buy frosting in a squirt can, or spoon some ready-made frosting into a resealable plastic food storage bag. Snip off the corner, and squeeze an outline at the edge of the cookie. 

11. Frost it. Treat yourself this holiday season to an offset spatula.  This will make life amazingly easy when you frost your cookies, either with a homemade icing or premade.

12. Top it.  Top your cookies with chopped nuts, shredded coconut, a strawberry slice, a chocolate-covered cherry. It’s so easy and adds a fancy flavor burst to any cookie in no time at all. 

HERSHEY’S® KISSES® conical figure is used under license.