Royal Icing: Take 1!

Since we have been offline so long (blame college), we decided to give you all a treat:

A front-row seat to our first Royal Icing attempt.

The sugar cookies themselves were relatively simple (see recipe below), although they took quite a while to make before we even got to the icing.

Oven ready and almost perfectly spherical!

Our recipe:

1 cup butter, almost completely melted
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, powdered sugar, egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt and flour. Mix until smooth. Chill dough until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper, or butter sheets, and set aside.

Roll out dough on a well floured surface until it is 1/4 inch thick. Cut out cookies with cookie cutters and carefully transfer them to the prepared cookie sheets. I used a spatula to try to maintain the spherical shape as much as possible. 

Bake cookies for 7-9 minutes. Cookies should be slightly brown on bottom. Let cool completely before frosting.

Relax, it's on wax paper...

For the frosting, we sort of cheated. I had been shopping early that day, and lost all willpower at one of my favorite cooking supply stores. Long story short, I ended up buying the royal icing in a bottle. At least it was good icing, okay?

Look how pretty!

It took about ten to fifteen minutes to ice all the cookies, and then they had to dry for about 45 minutes to an hour. Luckily, my parents weren't home so nobody tried to eat them while they were drying. By the time they were finished, I almost wished I had bought one of those frosting pens.

Smooth and dry... perfect for writing if I had a frosting pen!

Apparently the cookies were really tasty because they were gone in, like, ten minutes. I kid you not. I had 24 cookies, and they are gone. I think I had about 3. The really exciting part is that my mom was able to enjoy them as much as the rest of the family - and they aren't even gluten-free! They were delicious and simple, although time consuming.

Stay tuned this week for lunch and dinner recipes! Also, watch this weekend for an awesome St. Patty's recipe - for you, kids, and the leprechauns!

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