What’s the best thing about baking cookies? The decorating. What’s the worst thing? All that messy work, the creaming and beating, and the cleanup of the floury kitchen floor. The solution? Use packaged cookie doughs. Not only will you save prep time but the commercial doughs are also easier to roll out than the kinds you make yourself.

We used Pillsbury Sugar Cookie Dough, available in supermarkets across the country, and Maury's Holiday Edition Gingerbread, previously available in supermarkets and natural-food markets in 41 states (since discontinued; please use a comparable gingerbread substitute).

Tips for Stress-Free Baking

Follow the instructions on the dough packaging carefully. Begin with very cold dough. If the dough becomes too soft during rolling, place it in the refrigerator until it becomes manageable.

Use plenty of flour on your work surface. The sugar-cookie dough is softer and stickier, so you'll need to use more flour than with the gingerbread cookies. It also helps to lightly flour the rolling pin.

Rolling out the dough will be easier if you shape the dough into a disk first. Then roll the dough from the center out to the edges, rolling across in all directions. Roll the dough to an even thickness.

The directions for the sugar cookies say to roll the dough to 1/8 inch, but it's easier to roll it to 1/4 inch. Just remember that the thinner you roll the dough, the shorter the baking time will be. If you use two-inch cutters on dough rolled or cut 1/4 inch thick, you'll end up with about two dozen gingerbread cookies and a scant three dozen sugar cookies per package.

Flour the cookie cutters by dipping them in flour and tapping off the excess. Start cutting out at the edge of the rolled dough and work toward the center. Cut out the shapes as close together as possible to keep scraps to a minimum.

Because of the gingerbread's light brown color, it's a little more difficult to tell when these cookies are done. They are fully baked when the edges darken slightly and a finger pressed lightly into the center of a cookie does not leave an impression. The cookies will become crisper as they cool, so be careful not to bake them too long. You might even want to bake them for a shorter time to get chewier cookies.

After decorating, the royal icing will take between 10 minutes and two hours to dry, depending on how thick it is, how densely it's applied, and the level of humidity in the air.