Princess Cookies With Royal Icing

For Susan's Tablescapes Thursday I featured a

fabulous pool party that my daughter-in-law Audra

did for their 3 year old London.

I promised to do a tutorial on these delightful

cookies.

I have had these cookies commercially made before

and was not impressed with the taste, although they

were beautiful.

Audra's were great, the cookie still soft and everything

flavorful.  She told me she used my recipe:

Sugar Cookie Recipe

1 Pkg. Betty Crocker's French Vanilla Cake Mix (dry)

1 egg 

 1/2 C. butter (very very soft)

2-4 T. flour (I added this flour to make

a rolled cookie dough)

Mix the above in a mixer until smooth.

You don't need to chill this dough.

Roll out cookies.

Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes. (I did 7)

Yesterday we tried a more traditional sugar cookie as

the cake mix ones were a little cracked on the top

and thus harder to frost.

The result??!!

Nowhere near as delicious!!  A traditional

sugar cookie doesn't have enough taste to

support the blandness of a royal frosting.  The

recipe using the cake mix is extra sweet and

makes for a better tasting cookie.

I was not about to blog a tasteless cookie for you

and have you complain.

I tweaked the recipe and added flour to make

it a smoother rolling dough.  The tweaked recipe

appears above.  You can add the 2 T. for a moister

cookie or 4 T. for a firmer cookie.

As you can see, I roll the cookie dough out on floured
 parchmentpaper on the pan or on the counter and
 then slide it onto thepan.  Then I cut the cookies out,
 giving them space to expandon the pan so they won't touch
.  This way your cookies don'tstretch and get misshapen as
you transfer them to the pan.

Bake at 375 for 7 minutes or until tops look dry.  Do not overbake.

Let cool a couple of minutes on the pan, then move to a cookie rack

to cool completely.  You can stack them when cool.

The secret to the icing is to get the Royal Icing thin

 enough that itmelts back into itself as you count to 5.

  The icing in this picture still

needed to be thinned a little.

Royal Icing

3/4 C. warm water

5 T. meringue powder or powdered egg whites

1 tsp. cream of tartar

2 1/4 lb. powdered sugar

In mixer with paddle attachment, mix the

water and meringue powder on lowest speed

until well blended.  Add the cream of tartar.

Add the powdered sugar and set a kitchen

timer for 10 minutes.  Mix with paddle for 10

minutes. 

This will give you your typical royal icing that is

thick and can be used for solid piping.  We now

want to thin it down significantly.

Add additional water 1 T. at a time.  We added

7 more tablespoons. 

It should be thin enough to form a ribbon that

disappears back into the mass of the frosting

by the count of 5.  It has to hold its shape, but

not too much.

Divide into bowls to color.  We used the Neon

liquid colors.  They made really pretty colors

and only used 2-3 drops for each bowl.  We

had 4 colors and white.

Audra bought these squeeze bottles as the Bosch store. 

They wereonly $1 and came with the wonderful tip and

 coupler.  The tip wasthe perfect size for making little dots. 

We also did the yellow in aZiploc bag with the corner cut off. 

It worked well too, just make the hole very small.

If your frosting won't flow out of the bottle, add a little

 water to thin it down.  That is the key, thin but not so thin

 it runs offthe cookie. (We made one that way too!)

Start by piping the outline around the cookie.

You can let this sit a little while to dry it especially if you

plan to fill with a contrasting color.

If you are doing really dark colors, it is recommended

that you let the outline or dam dry overnight.

If you are doing the same color you don't have

to wait at all!  We didn't wait very long on

the colors we did.

Use the squeeze bottle to fill in the center.  Sometimes

I used the back of a spoon to spread it around.

Now is when you can't wait!

If you want to make designs on the cookies

you have to do it right away, so only do  one

cookie at a time.

This cookie was filled in with turquoise then purple

lines were piped across it.  See how the purple has

sunk into the blue.  That is what you are checking

for, it has to happen by the count of 5.

 Immediately use a toothpick to draw through the

 fresh frosting to make your designs.

Pipe dots around the border.  Let the center sit for

 a few minutes before you do this.

Not bad for a first timer huh?

London approved!

I will be posting this on

Foodie Fridays

and

Pink Saturday.