Dear Newbie,

Part of the fun of baking is experimenting a little bit. Go ahead and add some food coloring if you want to. Remember that baking will dull the color somewhat, so make it a little strong. One of my favorite fall cookies is a roll-and-cut sugar cookie, with the dough tinted yellow, orange, and red, and cut with a leaf cookie cutter. The finished cookies look like fall foliage. The different colored doughs are rolled together - you arrange little lumps of the three colors into a disc, and then roll that, so the colors are spread throughout the individual cookies.

Add your sugar sprinkles and other decors to the unbaked cookie. You may find it easier to pour a bit into a saucer and pinch up what you need for each cookie with your fingers, rather than trying to shake the sprinkles out of the containers directly onto the cookies. Some of the shapes tend to bounce and roll all over the place. Sprinkling from your fingers gives you better control.

You can also decorate with icings or glazes. Most of these you would apply after baking, and be careful to let them dry before you put the cookies away. There are some color glazes that you can paint onto the unbaked cookies. They give a different appearance - less shiny. The ones you put on after baking can be painted on or spread on with a small knife or squeezed on with a pastry bag and tips (or just a sandwich bag with the corner snipped off - snip just a tiny hole to start with).

Go ahead and experiment and have fun. The best part about baking is that you can eat your mistakes!