One of the best parts of the holidays is baking and decorating sugar cookies. The entire process from rolling out the cookies, cutting out the cookies, baking the cookies, and then decorating the cookies is very relaxing and is a great way to kick start all of the holiday festivities. Today, I baked two types of sugar cookies –a classic version and a reimagined version. The first type of sugar cookies I baked in the morning was Domino sugar’s classic sugar cookies. The second type of cookies I baked later in the day was my pie crust cookies which were very loosely based on my pie crust recipe. I typically just eat the sugar cookies as is once they are done baking, but adding royal icing makes the cookies so much prettier for the holidays. I spent a large part of my morning baking up a large batch of sugar cookies with vanilla royal icing to bring with me to work on Monday. I had signed up to bring sugar cookies for my office’s holiday luncheon on Monday. My favorite type of icing has a great vanilla taste, a soft consistency, and a shiny finish. I played around with different ratios of meringue powder, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, and milk when developing my vanilla royal icing. Many traditional royal icings use egg whites, but I decided to use meringue powder instead since I feared using egg whites (for food safety reasons). My basic vanilla royal icing uses just a couple of ingredients and has a very nice flavor, texture, and finish. Whenever I’m rolling out, baking, and decorating cookies, I like to play festive holiday music in the background. My favorite holiday music to play in the background are typically holiday playlists by Michael Bublé and Pentatonix. I just have to be careful about not eating too many sugar cookies throughout this process. I definitely lost count of how many sugar cookies I tasted throughout the day as I was decorating these cookies.
Vanilla Royal Icing
· 1 tablespoon meringue powder
· 1½ cups confectioners’ sugar
· 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
· 2 tablespoons milk
· 3-6 drops of gel food coloring of your choice
Directions:
1) In a bowl, combine the meringue powder, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, and milk. Use a spatula to fold all of the ingredients together until a smooth consistency is formed.
2) To decorate the cookies, use a small circular decorating tip to draw an outline around the edges of the cookies. Fill in the cookies with the icing. Use a toothpick or chopstick to fix any spaces in the filling. This helps ensure the cookies are completely filled with icing.
Takeaways: One batch of the royal icing decorates about 10-15 small to medium sized cookies. I made three batches of my vanilla royal icing and colored them with yellow, blue, and green. I decorated most of the sugar cookies in yellow and blue as a nod to Michigan’s maize and blue colors.