Christmas Cookies Decorated With Royal Icing: What You Need

Twelve stainless steel decorating tubes, one 12 inch flex bag with a hem and hanging loop, and a plastic coupler, packed with instructions and recipes in a clear plastic storage box. Made in Korea; Amazon lists it as model 333.

Royal icing on simple shapes uses a few tips over and over: a plain round for outlines and dots, perhaps a star for a border. A set gives you those and spares. The coupler lets you change tips on one bag of icing without emptying it, which matters when one color has to do both the outline and the details, and the box keeps twelve small parts from vanishing into a drawer.

Worth knowing: One reusable bag is not enough for more than one color at a time, and a cloth bag has to be washed and dried between sessions. If a design calls for a specific tip number, check the set's contents against it first.

Skip it if: Skip it if you plan to outline and flood with snipped disposable bags and no tips at all. For one-color rounds and dots, that works.

12 in (30.4 cm) single-use plastic piping bags that work with or without a tip and take standard and large tips and couplers. Wilton rates each for about 1/2 to 1 cup of buttercream. Wilton's own page sells the same bag as a 50-count set; this Amazon listing is the 100-count.

Decorated cookies use one bag per color per consistency. Two colors at outline and flood consistency is four bags in one sitting, and nobody wants to wash a reusable bag four times on a December evening. Disposable bags also let you skip tips entirely: fill, twist, snip a tiny opening and pipe.

Worth knowing: They are a consumable, not a tool, so you will buy them again. Wilton's capacity figure is for buttercream; runny flood icing is easier to control in a bag filled only halfway.

Skip it if: Skip them if you already own reusable bags and do not mind washing them between colors.

A 7 speed, 120 V hand mixer with stainless steel Turbo Beater II accessories, a pro whisk and a lockable swivel cord. It measures 6 in high x 3-1/2 in wide x 8 in deep.

Royal icing is whipped, not stirred: powdered sugar with meringue powder or egg white, beaten until it holds stiff peaks. By hand that is a long, tiring job. A hand mixer does it in the bowl you will color it in and then goes back in a drawer, so it takes no counter space between batches, which is the right trade for a few decorating sessions a year.

Worth knowing: You hold it for the whole whip. For very large batches, or royal icing for a gingerbread house as well as cookies, a stand mixer frees your hands.

Skip it if: Skip it if a stand mixer already lives on your counter. It whips royal icing just as well.

Eleven cutters made in the USA (Ann Clark SKU A6-137): snowflake, star, snow covered tree, gingerbread man, angel, reindeer, candy cane, mitten, sweater, snowman and light bulb.

The shapes that read best in simple icing have clean outlines and few points: star, tree, snowman, mitten and sweater. This set has all of them in one box, plus a few fussier shapes for when you want a challenge. Round cookies need no special cutter at all.

Worth knowing: Eleven shapes is more than a first session needs. The reindeer and snowflake have thin points that are harder to flood neatly and easier to snap.

Skip it if: Skip it if you only want rounds and squares. Those are a whole decorated cookie style of their own, and a plain round cutter or a glass does the job.

A PFOA-free nonstick steel grid with interior dimensions of 11.5 x 16.9 x 0.9 in that nests in Nordic Ware's half sheet pan. Oven safe up to 425F; hand washing recommended; made in China with a 5 year warranty.

Iced cookies need to dry flat and undisturbed, with air around them, often overnight. A grid that sits inside a half sheet pan becomes a drying tray you can lift off the counter onto a shelf or the top of the fridge without touching a single cookie. On a small counter, that is the difference between decorating one tray and decorating four.

Worth knowing: One grid holds one sheet of cookies. A big decorating day needs two or three, or a stretch of parchment somewhere out of reach.

Skip it if: Skip it if you already own cooling racks that fit inside a sheet pan. Any flat rack does the same job.