Several weeks ago I was roaming Target in a hypnotized state as I often do, and found the cutest set of Valentine's Day themed cookie cutters that were unique to ones that I already had, and I was re-inspired to try royal icing again! Today I'm going to walk you through my process, enlighten you to the BEST cutout sugar cookie recipe, and show you how they turned out!
The Cookies
The sugar cookie recipe I use is new to me as of last year, but I'm convinced it's the best! The recipe is simple, the dough requires NO chilling, and the cutouts stay PERFECTLY in shape without spreading out or puffing up. And they taste good, of course!
I use this recipe from Baking Mischief. It's a "small batch" recipe, so it's formulated to make about a dozen regular-sized cookies. What's great about the recipe is that it's easy to duplicate to make the perfect amount of cookies for your needs. In my case I just doubled it; the cutters I used were on the smaller side, so I actually ended up with 40-50 cookies.
There is a lot (A LOT) of information out there about royal icing! I did a ton of research this time around to make sure I knew as much as possible about technique and icing consistencies before jumping in.
The royal icing recipe I used was this one from Sweet Sugarbelle. I halved her recipe because hers is for 9-10 dozen cookies, but I ended up with more than half left over, so I definitely could've quartered it. Luckily from all of my research, I learned that you can store extra icing at room temperature for up to a month, so there are definitely more of these cookies in my near future! (UPDATE: I tried to use my leftover icing and it had separated in the piping bags. I shook it up and tried to mix it inside the bags as best I could, but it came out much runnier than it was originally. The cookies still turned out okay, but I'd avoid doing that again in the future. I'd store it in containers instead so that it'd be easier to mix back together and add additional powdered sugar or water if needed.) The one oddball ingredient in the recipe is meringue powder, which is essentially an powdered egg white substitute. You can find it in the baking section of craft stores, I bought mine at Michael's. I also found this recipe from Pioneer Woman for royal icing with regular egg whites in place of meringue powder, which I'm looking forward to trying as well!
The last time I worked with royal icing, I used the method of icing where you start with a thicker "outlining" consistency of icing to trace she shapes of all the cookies, and then water that same icing down to make it "flood" consistency to fill in the outlines. This time around, I knew I wanted to get the icing to a consistency that I was able to use both for outlining and flooding so that I could skip the dilution step. This article from Sweet Sugarbelle was really helpful for me to understand consistencies. I settled on a 20-ish second consistency, and divided my icing into thirds to make white, pink, and red icing. Most recipes will tell you to use gel food coloring for the best results, but I used liquid food coloring with no issue. The amount of watering down you have to do to your icing will depend on how much of each color you're making, so I would recommend adding a half teaspoon of water at a time when you're diluting it. It's time consuming, but way better than ending up with icing that's too runny. My three batches ended up with slightly different consistencies, but still achieved the same final effect. One thing to note is that the icing oxidizes as it dries, so it will turn out a little darker than it starts.
The Process
It definitely took me a few cookies to get the hang of the icing process. For the outlining you have to go slow, but not TOO slow or the line starts to squiggle back on itself. Filling in is pretty easy, I just squeezed as much icing into the outline as I thought I needed, and then used a toothpick to fill in the holes and smooth everything out.
Adding sprinkles is the best part! Some of the cookies I added sprinkles to right away, and others I let dry before adding additional icing and sprinkles. I used mostly different colors of sanding sugar. I used some jimmies too which were cute, but they work best on one solid color of icing.
Toward the end of my icing, I tried a new technique that I wish I had done more of! I filled in a whole cookie with one color, and then added dots of icing and ran a toothpick through the dots to create little heart shapes! I also did some stripes and ran a toothpick back and forth perpendicular to the stripes to make a cool marbled pattern, and I did some plain dots on some too.
Final Thoughts
When the cookies were done, I actually didn't even try one for a few days because I didn't think they'd taste good with the amount of food coloring I had to add to the icing. Once I finally tried one, I realized they were amazing! My mom and I can't stop eating them now, so it's good I have so much icing left over, ha!
Overall I think they turned out really well, and I definitely want to do more soon! I think the diamond shaped ones would be super cute for an engagement/bachelorette/bridal parties, so I have aspirations for that as well.
Have a SWEET week, everyone!
xoxx, Laura
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