Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

My daughter and I will be baking Sugar cookies with Royal icing for the first time.

Does anyone have any advice? We plan to keep the decorating to a minimum. (Christmas light bulb and a star or circle)

But DD is a bit of a perfectionist, so we don't want to screw this up! Thanks.

Re: Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Check out my food blog, I have a whole article on baking sugar cookies. Click the link below. Hope it helps!

"Baking How-To" - Making Sugar Cookies

Re: Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Cookies with royal icing are my favorite decorating medium!

I use Sweet Sugarbelle's cookie recipe and it has never steered me wrong. People rave about it.

Link.

The only thing I like to do differently is chill the dough for about 30 minutes before rolling it out. She *says* you don't need to, but it definitely rolls out nicer that way.

For the royal icing, consistency is key! I use Wilton meringue powder (you can get it at Michael's- use a coupon, it's pricey!) and gel food coloring. The Wilton meringue powder has a recipe on the package, however I always find I need to doctor it a little bit, which is actually very easy. Royal icing is literally powdered sugar, water, and meringue powder- that's it! The Wilton recipe always come out very thick, which is not great for piping the icing onto the cookies with a piping bag. To thin your icing, just add more water a little at a time. I like mine to be fairly thin so if I swipe my spoon through it, the icing settles and smooths (meaning you can't see the line your spoon made) in about 20 seconds. If your icing gets too thin, add a little more powdered sugar. Easy peasy! Make sure to cover your royal icing with a wet paper towel that *touches* the royal icing when you're not using it (it's fine it if it's in a piping bag as well) so that it doesn't crust over. I don't refrigerate my royal icing either as it messes with the consistency and I almost always use all of it right away.

When you're piping the icing, I usually don't even bother with a tip (unless it's very detailed work), just a piping bag with a small hole snipped at the tip. I line the cookies and immediately fill them. If you're having a hard time filling them, your icing may be too thick and thinning it will make it easier. If it's flowing over the edges, it's too thin and thickening it will clean it up. You can also use a toothpick to smooth any air bubbles or imperfections in the cookies.

As I said, I love decorating cookies. I find it super relaxing! You guys are gonna have a blast. And hey, even when one gets messed up, they're still delicious! And if you have any questions, feel free to FM me!

ETA: The best way to make sure your cookies come out well is to make sure the cookies are very flat and smooth when you bake them. Otherwise, the royal icing looks lumpy since it's on a lumpy cookie.

Message edited 11/14/2018 8:54:18 AM.

Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

My absolute must is adding a couple tsp of fresh, strained lemon juice to the royal icing mixture to cut the sweetness.

Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Thank you everyone. These suggestions look helpful! I'll let you know how they turn out!

Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

I'd say the cookies were a success! They taste good and look good. However my kitchen did not look anything like on blogs and you tube videos! (Neither did my fingers).
We only did one shape- a Christmas light bulb- with 4 colors and a gold for the base.

Once we played with the consistency, it all started to fall into place. I think the hardest part was switching between the piping and flood. (Filling the bags and getting the tips out!) Momma 2015 I see why you don't use tips. Next time I will try your way.

I think we made twice as much royal icing than needed which was good, because we didn't have to worry about our errors.

The drying is taking a little longer than I thought. I might be able to bag them today. (24 hours later) We probably were a little heavy handed with the icing. Now I don't know who is going to eat them all!

I would certainly bake them again.

Thanks for the advice. It really helped!!

PS I would post a picture, but I don't know how.

Re: Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Re: Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Message edited 11/19/2018 10:04:28 AM.

Re: Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Posted by Momma2015

Posted by lmcmcl

I'd say the cookies were a success! They taste good and look good. However my kitchen did not look anything like on blogs and you tube videos! (Neither did my fingers).
We only did one shape- a Christmas light bulb- with 4 colors and a gold for the base.

Once we played with the consistency, it all started to fall into place. I think the hardest part was switching between the piping and flood. (Filling the bags and getting the tips out!) Momma 2015 I see why you don't use tips. Next time I will try your way.

I think we made twice as much royal icing than needed which was good, because we didn't have to worry about our errors.

The drying is taking a little longer than I thought. I might be able to bag them today. (24 hours later) We probably were a little heavy handed with the icing. Now I don't know who is going to eat them all!

I would certainly bake them again.

Thanks for the advice. It really helped!!

PS I would post a picture, but I don't know how.

That's exactly why I don't use tips, except for detail work. Ugh, I hate cleaning them out! I use these tipless piping bags for my cookies- I like these as opposed to regular piping bags which are thicker and can give you a wonky shape if you don't use a tip. I buy them on Amazon. I actually don't change the consistency for lining vs. flooding either, but that's something you can play around with in the future if you decide to do them again. I do really love working with royal icing- there's so many cool and most importantly SIMPLE things you can do do to add to your design. Glad they worked out for you!

ETA: And don't worry, the counter top I use to decorate cookies is permanently stained from the gel food coloring. My hands always look like they are bruised from all the colors the day after I decorate. That gel food coloring is no joke. There's also approximately 47 dirty bowls and spoons in the sink for all the different colors I mixed before starting to pipe. Oh well!

Message edited 11/20/2018 2:58:21 PM.

Re: Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

Posted by lmcmcl

Posted by Momma2015

Posted by lmcmcl

I'd say the cookies were a success! They taste good and look good. However my kitchen did not look anything like on blogs and you tube videos! (Neither did my fingers).
We only did one shape- a Christmas light bulb- with 4 colors and a gold for the base.

Once we played with the consistency, it all started to fall into place. I think the hardest part was switching between the piping and flood. (Filling the bags and getting the tips out!) Momma 2015 I see why you don't use tips. Next time I will try your way.

I think we made twice as much royal icing than needed which was good, because we didn't have to worry about our errors.

The drying is taking a little longer than I thought. I might be able to bag them today. (24 hours later) We probably were a little heavy handed with the icing. Now I don't know who is going to eat them all!

I would certainly bake them again.

Thanks for the advice. It really helped!!

PS I would post a picture, but I don't know how.

That's exactly why I don't use tips, except for detail work. Ugh, I hate cleaning them out! I use these tipless piping bags for my cookies- I like these as opposed to regular piping bags which are thicker and can give you a wonky shape if you don't use a tip. I buy them on Amazon. I actually don't change the consistency for lining vs. flooding either, but that's something you can play around with in the future if you decide to do them again. I do really love working with royal icing- there's so many cool and most importantly SIMPLE things you can do do to add to your design. Glad they worked out for you!

ETA: And don't worry, the counter top I use to decorate cookies is permanently stained from the gel food coloring. My hands always look like they are bruised from all the colors the day after I decorate. That gel food coloring is no joke. There's also approximately 47 dirty bowls and spoons in the sink for all the different colors I mixed before starting to pipe. Oh well!

Thank you for that tip! (Pun intended) I will order those bags for DD- put them in her stocking! Great idea about using the same consistency for the piping and flood.
I got lazy at the end and spritzed water in my piping bag for the flood. But I think it did splotched up the icing on a cookie.

Thanks for letting me know you've made messes too. I guess if someone actually videoed what their kitchen looks like after, no one would bother making them!

It was a lot more fun than I thought and we will do it again. Just maybe a little simpler on the colors.