Royal Icing Sugar Cookies

     

I was finished exams on December 13th (luckiest girl alive) so I hatched an involved and extensive cookies plan! I was going to bake five (I repeat five) different cookies, with variations of some. Some family classics, some new and ROYAL ICING SUGAR COOKIES.
As an avid blog reader, I've been obsessed with the beautiful cookies almost too perfect to eat, see Annie's blog http://annies-eats.com/2010/12/22/snowflake-sugar-cookies/ as well as Shannon's http://www.thecurvycarrot.com/2010/12/03/royal-icing-cookies/.

So i bought reusable pastry bags, tips, gel icing and got down to business. I started off baking a double batch of Mrs. Field's Christmas Sugar Cookies (recipe below) cut out in circles and christmas trees and left to cool all night.

The next day I set up with containers and lids, tall glasses with a cm of water and some can-do attitude! I followed Shannon's tutorial but found my own royal icing recipe as I'm not afraid of egg whites and used a hand-held electric mixer to beat the heck out of only three ingredients. Recipes like this never cease to amaze me, that you can start off with sugar and egg whites and end up with a huge bowl of silky, shiny, stiff, gorgeous, delicious icing (I didn't take a picture so you'll have to take my word for it).

After all that work I ended up with these :) (not bad for my first try!)

                                         Mrs. Field's Sugar Cookies (adapted a tad)

•  2 cups flour (half whole wheat, half unbleached)
• 3/4 cup softened salted butter
• 3/4 packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 F.

In a large mixing bowl (with high sides, especially if doubling the recipe) cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well mixed. Add flour and mix on low speed, being careful not to overmix. 

Gather dough into a ball (or two), flatten in a disk (or disks) and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate an hour or until firm. 

On a floured surface (parchment paper dusted with flour) roll out dough with a floured rolling pin to a 1/4 inch thickness and cut shapes as desired. Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 13-15 min being careful not to brown. Let cool on cookie sheet for a little while then transfer to a cooling rack. 

After your cookies are cool you can hop right into icing (BUT MAKE SURE THEY'RE COOL). I know it's hard to wait, I know, I'm the most impatient baker in existence (you don't know how many cakes I've ruined due to premature icing). 

Royal Icing (adapted from joyofbaking.com)

• 3 cups icing sugar
• 2 egg whites
• splash of vanilla

Add all ingredients into a deep mixing bowl. Started off slow at first (to not cause a poof of icing sugar), beat on high for 10 minutes. I know this is a long time but you may amuse yourself by day-dreaming, phone-talking, tv-watching, music-listening or by just watching three ingredients MAGICALLY turn into royal icing :)

Divy up the icing into sealed containers depending on how many colours you need. Colour icing accordingly (a little goes a long way when using gel icing).

Add icing to folded over piping bags and pipe outlines onto your cookies. Let this dry for at least 2 hours. In the meantime keep your piping bags sealed with an elastic band and sit them in a tall glass with a cm of water at the bottom (to prevent icing from drying and blocking the tip). 

Now that the outline is dry add water to the icing little by little until you can dribble some back in the container and have it disappear within 10 seconds. 

Fill your empty piping bags with the flooding icing and flood each cookie (using the tip to help you spread). 

Let sit OVER NIGHT!

In the morning, use a clean piping bag to decorate :) Let them sit for another 2 hours and then immediately give them to people so they may be thoroughly impressed by your hard, hard work. 

And be proud, you are amazing.