Last week I shared with you a super quick and easy recipe for sugar cookies, but what are sugar cookies without frosting?
So this week I’m sharing a quick recipe to make your own homemade royal icing.
Royal Icing
Most of you are likely familiar with buttercream frosting the typical applied to cakes and cupcakes. As the name suggests buttercream frosting is made with butter and is soft and fluffy in texture.
Royal Icing, on the other hand, is a smooth thicker frosting that hardens a bit like a glue. It is used as support for gingerbread houses or on top of cookies for creating unique designs or holding topping such as sprinkles. It is also excellent for making decorations such as icing roses.
Making Homemade Royal Icing
Often used on bakery cookies royal icing can easily be made at home with only a few ingredients.
The key to making royal icing is getting your consistency right. Too thick and you make break the cookie your are applying it to, to running and the frosting may slide off.
- 3 tablespoons Meringue Powder
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 5 - 10 tablespoons water
- Sift powedered sugar into a large mixing bowl.
- Mix in the Meringue powder.
- Gradually add water to mixture until icing forms peaks
- Use a metal spatula to apply to tops of cookies
Classic Frosted Cookies
The addition of royal icing to your cookies really give it a classic bakery look.
Holiday cookies especially, tend to gain an added festiveness with a topping of royal icing.
While you can add food coloring to your frosting to give it color, I like the addition of using colorful sprinkles instead.
These cookies have a great holiday look to them and they were relatively easy to whip up.
I’m sure everyone will enjoy these royal icing topped sugar cookies, even Santa!
If you try your hand at making this recipe I’d love to hear in the comments below, how yours turned out.
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