Cookie decorating with kids, set up once for Halloween through Christmas

Decorating cookies with kids sounds like a holiday memory, and it often turns into an afternoon of icing on the chairs, sprinkles in the rug and an adult trying to bake, mix and supervise at the same time.

The fix is to split the job in two. Adults bake the day before and mix the icing ahead. Kids come to the table to find a tray that already holds everything they need. Set it up once in October and run the same afternoon all season.

Bake one day, decorate the next

Baking and decorating on the same day is what makes the afternoon long. Bake the cookies a day or two before, let them cool completely and keep them in an airtight container. On decorating day, the decorating itself takes about an hour, which is close to how long most kids want to do it.

Choose a sturdy cut-out recipe, such as sugar cookies or gingerbread, and roll the dough about a quarter inch thick so the cookies don’t snap in small hands. Chunky shapes decorate best. Pumpkins, leaves, circles, mittens and trees give a child a big surface to fill. Skinny shapes with lots of points tend to break.

If friends are coming, ask the parents about food allergies before you choose a recipe. Meringue powder is made with dried egg whites, so royal icing contains egg.

Make the icing with meringue powder

Royal icing is the one to use for cookies that will be stacked, boxed or given away, because it dries hard and buttercream stays soft. Make it with meringue powder, not raw egg whites. Wilton’s royal icing recipe tells bakers not to substitute raw egg whites, “which can be a food safety issue.” That matters more with kids, who lick their fingers.

Wilton’s recipe uses 4 cups (about a pound) of powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons of meringue powder and 5 tablespoons of warm water. Beat it with a mixer until it’s thick and glossy.

For kids, skip the two-icing method decorators use, with stiff icing for outlines and thin icing for filling. Thin all of it with water, a few drops at a time, until it’s about the texture of toothpaste. That holds a line from a piping bag and still spreads with the back of a spoon or a toothpick.

Color the icing with gel food coloring before anyone sits down. Four or five colors is plenty. Royal icing crusts over quickly, so keep each bowl covered while you work. Wilton says leftover royal icing keeps in an airtight container at room temperature for up to two weeks, and should be re-whipped before you use it again.

Fill the bags before the kids arrive

Fill each piping bag only about halfway. A half-full bag is lighter in a small hand and less likely to burst. Twist the top closed and wrap a rubber band around the twist, so the icing comes out of the tip and not the back.

A small round tip, or a bag with the tip snipped off, is all most kids need. Make one bag per color and let the kids share them. Ten bags cover about two afternoons, so add a pack of disposable piping bags to the bin before December. For younger children, put a spoonful of each color in a small cup with a butter knife instead.

One tray per child

This is the part that keeps the mess in one place. Give each child a rimmed sheet pan to work on. The sprinkles, the drips and the broken cookie all stay inside the rim. Write each child’s name on a piece of painter’s tape along the edge.

On each tray:

• Three or four plain cookies, with more waiting in the kitchen.
• Small cups of sprinkles, a teaspoon or two of each, so the whole jar doesn’t get tipped out.
• A damp paper towel for sticky fingers.

Pass the bags around the table. When a tray fills up with loose sprinkles, tip them onto a piece of parchment, fold it into a funnel and pour them back into a cup.

Cover the table with parchment or a plastic tablecloth, roll up sleeves and put aprons on anyone in a sweater they like.

Let them dry before anyone stacks them

As each cookie is finished, move it to a cooling rack in a single layer, out of reach of the dog. Wilton says royal icing can take up to two hours to dry. Thickly iced cookies need longer, so for cookies headed into boxes or gift bags, leave them out uncovered overnight before you stack them.

Once they’re dry, store them in an airtight container with a sheet of parchment between the layers.

Use the same kit all season

Everything here goes back in one bin in the pantry: the cutters, the meringue powder, the bags and tips, the sprinkles and the gel colors. Before each holiday, check the bin and bake.

• October: pumpkins and leaves in orange, black and white.
• November: leaves and circles in fall colors, for the Thanksgiving dessert table.
• December: trees, mittens and round ornaments, for the cookie swap and the neighbor boxes.

What to actually buy

The cutters. An eleven-piece set of Ann Clark cookie cutters, made in the USA, with a mix of shapes for every season, so one set covers the whole year.

The piping kit. A Wilton 20-piece decorating set with 10 disposable bags and 10 stainless steel tips. It’s sold for buttercream, and the bags and tips work the same way with royal icing.

The meringue powder. A 4-ounce container of LorAnn meringue powder, a pasteurized stand-in for fresh egg whites in royal icing.

The racks. Two stainless steel cooling racks, 17 by 11 3/4 inches, which fit inside a half-sheet pan and give a whole batch room to dry in a single layer.

Who this is not for

• If your children are toddlers, give them a cookie, a spoonful of icing and a few sprinkles, and skip the piping bags.
• If the cookies will be eaten the same afternoon, store-bought frosting works and doesn’t need time to dry.
• If you’d rather not bake at all, buy plain sugar cookies or graham crackers and decorate those.

Start on any Monday

This week, pick your recipe, check the pantry for powdered sugar and sprinkles, and find a rimmed sheet pan for each child.

The day before the decorating afternoon, bake and cool the cookies. On the day, mix and color the icing, fill the bags, set up the trays and call the kids to the table.