Page 181 - Classic Cookies with Modern Twists

prevent your icing from softening and r unning as you decorate.
Tr y baking one day and decorating the next.

• Use older egg whites for royal icing with the best texture.

• Store royal icing in an airtight cont ainer in the refrigerator for
up to 3 days.

• Allow iced cookies a full day to dr y.

HOW-TO

1. Arrange your cool, freshly baked cookies on sheets of
parchment paper, leaving enough room between them to move
from one to the other without grazing the tops (wet icing!) with
your hand.

2. Prepare the royal icing (recipe follows), which you’ll use to
outline (and then eventually ood) your cookies. The piped
border/outline is thicker, to prevent the thinner (ood) icing
from spreading outside of it. The border icing should be just thin

enough to pour into a pastr y bag tted with a small tip or a
plastic squ eeze bottle. After outlining the cookies, allow the
border icing to dr y slightly before ooding. Meanwhile, thin the

remaining border icing for ooding with additional lemon juice.
Though still somewhat thick, this icing should drizzle freely
from a spoon, ow smoothly from a pastr y bag or plastic bottle,
and move and settle effortlessly inside the border. Once you’ve
achieved the correct consistenc y, divide the icing between as

many small bowls as you’d like to have colors, then add color.
Use a toothpick to introduce a small amount of gel or paste to
your royal icing, slowly adding more to achieve the desired

intensity.

3. Fill the interiors of the cookies with ood icing. (Toothpicks
and skewers are the best tools for distributing the ood icing,
popping air bubbles, and pushing the lling into corners and up