Learning to Decorate Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I've been in awe for some time of the ability of the decorators who create the beautiful cookies with royal icing. Bridget of Bake at 350 is one of those awesome cookie decorators, and my sister Helen is another one. This weekend I visited my sister at her home in Texas, and she gave me a hands-on cookie decorating lesson. Since it was my first time to work with the techniques of outlining and flooding the icing, it took a little practice to get the hang of it, but I got a batch of cookies decorated.

The cookie recipe we used is the one that Bridget recommends for basic decorated cookies, and it is a very tasty sugar cookie recipe.

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Vanilla - Almond Sugar Cookies

3 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup vanilla sugar (sugar that has been stored with a vanilla bean)

2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a sheet pan by lining with parchment paper. In a small bowl, combine the flour and baking powder; set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg, vanilla extract, and almond extract, mix well. Gradually add the flour mixture, and mix until combined, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl. This will be a crumbly dough and must be kneaded together after it is poured out on the floured rolling surface. Roll the dough from 1/4 to 3/8-inch thick, then cut out into shapes. Place cookies onto prepared pan and place pan in freezer for 5 minutes before baking. Bake in preheated oven for 10 -12 minutes. Allow to cool on pan for a few minutes, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Royal Icing

4 tablespoons meringue powder
scant 1/2 cup water
1 pound powdered sugar (MUST be sifted)
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
a few drops of almond extract

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the meringue powder and water, beat with the paddle attachment until foamy. Sift in the powdered sugar and beat on low until combined. Add the corn syrup and almond extract and beat on medium/high to high for about 5 minutes or until the icing is glossy and stiff peaks form. Icing can be used in this form for outlining or for projects such as gingerbread houses. To use for cookie icing for "flooding," thin with 1 teaspoon water at a time until the consistency of syrup.

Bridget has many tips on working with Royal Icing here. Icing can be tinted with your favorite food colorings as desired.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface from 1/4 to 3/8-inch thick.

Cut out as desired and bake on parchment paper lined baking sheets.

After cookies have completely cooled, use a #2 or #3 tip to outline the desired shapes on the cookies with Royal Icing.

Using thinned royal icing, flood the outlines. Plastic squeeze bottles work very well for flooding.

While icing is wet, additional colors can be added to flood icing for contrast.

Allow iced cookies to dry overnight before stacking.

One additional note I wanted to make about these sugar cookies is that the taste improves overnight. If you eat them when they are hot right out of the oven, you might think these cookies are nothing special, but just give them a little time to cool and develop their flavor, and they will be perfect, trust me!




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