If you are looking for a way to dress up a cake or cupcakes for a holiday or special occasion, one fun way to do this is to add cookies.

You can purchase ready made sugar cookie dough from the store or make your own and cut out fun shapes with cookie cutters. If you don’t have cookie cutters in the shapes you want, you can use a knife to cut out shapes or letters. Plastic caps or small tin cans can also work to give you various sizes of circles (nice for a fun polka dot cake).

Decorate the cookies with colored sugar and then bake, or bake and then frost with royal icing. Ice the cookies in various shades or try swirling two colors of icing together to create a pretty design. If your inner artist is inspired, frost the cookies in white and paint your design using powder or gel paste food colors.

Once your cookies are done, they can be added to the cake. Use letters to spell out “Happy Birthday” on the top of your cake rather than writing it in icing, or stick the cookies to the sides and top to make it fit the occasion. A plain white cake becomes perfectly adorable with new baby cookies “sprinkled” all over it. Dress up a summer cake with flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, and ladybugs.

I dressed up some cupcakes from a local bakery for St. Patrick’s Day by placing shamrocks on top. I much prefer decorating with cookies than using standard sugar decorations because the cookies are prettier and much yummier.