Easy instructions to help you brush up on your decorating skills. 

Today I’m talking about some techniques for icing cookies! Hint, hint….it may come in handy for my next post!

What’s the difference between icing and frosting? This is an extremely common mistake. Frosting is creamy, contains butter, and is usually used to decorate cakes, or to decorate cookies imprecisely. Icing is what you throw on cinnamon buns, usually made of powdered sugar and water/milk, and is used to make specific and more accurate designs on cookies. Royal icing specifically is the icing used on cookies that hardens and doesn’t run. This is what I used to decorate my cookies!

So to make Royal Icing, whisk 2 cups of powdered sugar and 2 1/2 Tablespoons of water together until smooth. Add food coloring.

Place a cookie on a piece of waxed paper. Using a pastry bag or an icing bottle and a #1 tip, pipe the icing out and trace the area you want to be that color on the cookie (picture 1,2, and 3). This is so that you have nice edges and so that the icing doesn’t drip down the sides of the cookie when you flood the middle. If the line you traced drips over the edges of the cookies, you either got too close to the edge or your icing is too runny, and you need to add more powdered sugar. Now flood the area inside the line with more icing (picture 4). Take a toothpick the help smear it around (picture 5 and 6).

If you want to add a different color within the flooded area, do so while the first color is still wet. If you want a more raised texture to the cookie, wait until the first color is dry to add the second. That is what I did with the carrots for the second orange and green.

This royal icing recipe iced about 15 cookies but depending on how  large your cookies are that will vary. I recommend making one recipe and then making more if you need it so that you don’t end up with oodles of icing.

…and voilà!