Icing Cookies - Start With a Border

Showing your love with a heart is a time honored tradition. But don’t just slap some frosting on your cookie. Likewise, don’t allow it to run off the edges of your neatly cut-out cookie. Instead, give your royal icing a smooth, rounded edge all the way around the cookie.

This one easy step, done prior to adding the icing to the cookie will make all the difference in providing a polished looking cookie. Make your cut-out cookies look beautiful and professional.

Icing Cookies Easily for Valentines

Valentine Icing Cookies

icing cookies

Instructions for Icing Cookies – Hearts – the Easy Way

1) Start with completely cooled cut-out cookies. Since sugar cookies are a stable cookie with a fairly long shelf life, we usually bake the cookies one day and then frost them the next day.

2) Grab a tube of cake decorating that you picked up half price from the Christmas sale, it’s still perfectly good and exactly the right color. Pipe a border around the edge of your heart. Do this step to all of your cookies first and by the time you’ve done all of them, the first ones should be dry enough for step #2.

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Alternately, you can fill a clean plastic squeeze bottle with a thicker royal icing. Pipe the icing very close to the edge in order to save cookies that you may have accidentally made a little too golden around the edges (like this picture). They still taste good and this way they will look good too.
3) Make some thin icing by adding a little more water to a royal icing recipe. Take a spoonful of icing and pour it into the middle of the heart and let it flow toward the wall that you created at the edge. You can use the back of a spoon to help coax the icing toward the edges.
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4) Patience makes the heart grow fonder… these cookies must set at room temperature for at least 30 minutes if you plan to decorate further, like adding names. To dry completely so that you can stack them away, you’ll need to wait most of the day or overnight.
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Optional: Add a little leftover red sprinkle sugar from Christmas (it’s still good) to the names you’ve forever etched into your heart and then turn the cookie over to shake off the excess so your names will shine.
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Additional Information

Royal icing is a must for properly icing cut-out cookies. With the slim chance of getting Salmonella from eating raw eggs, we chose to print this recipe for royal icing as an alternative to the more common recipe using raw egg whites. Another alternative is to buy meringue powder, as sold by Wilton, and use their recipe.

EASY ROYAL ICING RECIPE

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1½ Cups Powdered Sugar
  • 1 Tbls Milk (use regular, almond, rice or soy)
  • 2 tsps light Corn Syrup (Karo)
  • ½ tsp Vanilla (or try almond, orange or lemon extract for a change-up pop of flavor)
  • INSTRUCTIONS:

    1. Whip powdered sugar and milk till combined.
    2. Add corn syrup and extract and continue to blend until smooth.
    3. Test for consistency – drizzle some icing off your spoon and count how long you can see the drizzle before it blends into the rest of the icing. If it disappears before you reach 10 then add a bit more powdered sugar, if it holds up beyond 10 then add a drop of water.

    This icing will keep in the fridge for 3-4 days, but it’s best to make it just before you wish use it because it does harden up. Cookies may remain in your cookie jar for a few weeks, but the icing is best within a week. Cut-out cookies also freeze well.

    To find out how long other foods are good for, please visit the Dairy, Drinks, Fruits, Grains, Proteins, Vegetables and Other sections of Eat By Date or use the search function below.

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