For some foodie people, Christmas can be a delight, a time when pinwheel jelly cakes, moon-shaped, snow-dusted crunchies and other morsels are churned out with seemingly no effort. And then there are the others the time-strapped, the culinarily challenged and people with no access to the Food Network. You know who you are.Maybe in a moment of weakness you promised to take part in a homemade cookie exchange (an unfortunate side effect of the current economic downturn). You promised to bring cookies to a function or your toddler looked at you with sad little eyes saying: “All the other moms bake cookies”. Take heart, you can buy ready-to-bake cookies in the supermarket. There is no shame in it (well not much). They come in a variety of styles, some with Christmas trees and reindeers already stamped on them. Some come already cut into shapes like stars.Here are a few simple ways to glam them up a little. The Royal Gazette Christmas test kitchen tried them, and has already made most of the mistakes for you. First of all you’re going to need to follow the directions on the package. In this case, we used a package of Pillsbury Ready To Bake sugar cookies which came stamped with reindeers and Christmas trees and were 24 to a package.Start by preheating your oven to the temperature specified on the back of the package. In this case it was 375F (190C). Place about 12 on a 9 x 13 cookie sheet. If you decide to just throw all 24 cookies on the sheet at once they will bake together and make an uneven sheet of cookie mess. They need space.While your cookies bake for exactly the time and temperature listed on the package, work on your toppings. In this case we baked the cookies for eight minutes. Don’t be tempted to put your toppings on before cooking, because they will melt into the cookie. (It will still taste good though).The only thing that seemed to weather the baking process were the M&Ms. The coconut shavings could go on before baking, but if it browns it hardly looks festive. Also, don’t try to make little sandwiches of the cookies before they go into the oven because they will melt into one another and just make a bigger cookie. (Nice try though).Put your candy canes or red and white hard candy in a plastic ziplock and bang away at them with something heavy such as a kitchen mallet. Don’t pulverise them though, because you want some red and white to show on the cookie. You might want to bash up your M&Ms a little also. By far, this is the best part of the process. The bashing is a good way to let out all your Christmas frustrations. Unfortunately, the bashing doesn’t take that long.When the cookies come out of the oven, don’t let them rest on the hot pan for more than a minute because they will continue to cook and burn. In their first infant minutes out of the oven sprinkle your Christmas bits on top of them. Leave a few without toppings and just let them cool.When your plain cookies are cooled, put half a packet of chocolate chips in a bowl and microwave them, checking ever 20 seconds or so until they are all melted. Then take your cooled plain cookies, and dip half of each in the chocolate and let it sit somewhere out of the reach of dogs and small children. The chocolate on the cookies should harden fairly quickly, but is helped along by being placed in the refrigerator.If you bought quick cookies at the supermarket without the decoration already stamped on them, you can decorate them yourself or get your children to do it. Remove the egg yolk from two eggs. Using the food colouring, put your chosen colour into the egg white and whisk gently so the colour is all through the egg white. Then using a small, sanitised paint brush (not one previously used for finger paint) use the egg white to paint a decoration on the cookie dough, before it is put in the oven. This will help it maintain the colour. You might want to throw the paint brush away afterward since you had it in raw egg.If none of these ideas came out quite as you expected, there is usually also a baking idea on the back of the package to follow. Once, the cookies are completed to your satisfaction, take one of those 1960s Christmas plates you inherited from your great aunt, or a festive Christmas cookie tin and line it with colourful Christmas paper. Place your cookies inside as artfully as you can manage, and serve!IngredientsOne or two egg whitesYou can use any of the following toppings to your taste:A package of shredded coconut;A large package of M&Ms get the Christmas red and green ones if they are offered;A package of Hershey’s Heath toffee bits;Candy canes or red and white striped candy;One package of chocolate chips;Cranberries;Sprinkles.You will also need a flat pan to bake the cookies on, something large like a mallet to bash the hard candy, a plastic bag to bash the hard candy in and food colouring.