Easter Cookies - Recipe and "Tutorial"

I think it's hilarious that I'm even writing this post, but I have several friends from college who are wanting to start making/decorating cookies with Royal Icing and they've asked for some recipes and tips.  First tip - don't listen to me because I have no clue what I'm doing!  HA!  Just kidding.  But seriously, I have several friends who helped me with recipes and helped me learn how to even put icing/tips in the bags...I didn't even know how to do that!  (Thanks Jennilee!)  My point is...if I can learn, anyone can learn!  

One of my closest friends Emily lives in St. Louis and she has been making cookies for awhile and she helped me so much.  She has a super cute blog and several months ago she did a post about cookies and icing.  You can also look on her sidebar at the label "cookies" for some other good posts and pictures of cookies.  But here is her post about the cookies...check it out to get some great tips.  

http://www.theycallmemama.com/2014/01/the-perfect-cut-out-cookie.html?m=1

I also learned a TON from reading the blog "sweet sugar belle"...you can look her up.  I use her icing recipe, but not her cookie recipe.  But she has GREAT tips and ideas and I learned a lot by reading some of her posts on her website.

Without further ado...HERE YA GO!

Day 1 - Bake Your Cookies 

Here is the recipe I've been using for the cookies.  

2 sticks softened butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

2 t. extract (my favorite is almond, but not everyone likes that.  You can use clear vanilla extract too).

3 cups flour

1/2 t. salt

Cream the butter and sugar in your mixer (major tip - use a Kitchen Aid and use the paddle attachment) until it's light and fluffy.  In a separate bowl crack your egg and add the extract and mix it together, then add it to the mixer.  Mix until well blended.  In a separate bowl whisk your flour and salt together.  With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture until it's all blended together.

Put your dough in the fridge and let it chill for at least 30 minutes. (Well, the recipe says 30 minutes but I'd do it much later...like mix up your dough and through it in the fridge and forget about it for a couple of hours).  It's so much easier to cut the shapes out after it's chilled!  Roll the dough to about 1/4 thick and cut out your cookies.  Then bake them about 7-8 minutes on 350.  If your dough is really chilled it will be kind of hard to roll out at the beginning...like crumbly.  Just play with it a little bit and it will roll out just fine (you won't even need to use flour on it).

You can cool the cookies on the baking sheet or on a rack (but be careful...don't take them off the baking sheet to quick.  They are fragile at the beginning!)  Once they are all the way cool, you can stack them and store them in an airtight container.  I read on a blog that the cookies do better if you ice them the NEXT day, so I always bake on day 1 and ice on day 2.  

Day 2 - Icing

The icing is what really intimidated me, but it's not that hard.  But I DO recommend using a Kitchen Aid!  And use the whisk attachment.

Royal Icing Recipe - 1-2 lb. bag of powdered sugar, 3/8 cup meringue powder (you can buy it at Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby), 1 T. extract, 3/4 cup warm water (actually just a tiny tiny bit less than 3/4 cup)

Put the powdered sugar and meringue powder in the kitchen aid and whisk it together on low.  Then in a separate bowl stir the warm water and extract together.  (Make sure you use clear extract because it will change the color of your icing and you want it to be perfectly white.) Pour that in the kitchen aid and let it mix on low for just a little bit (less than 30 seconds).  Then turn the mixer on medium and let it go for 7 minutes!  Then I check it.  When you turn the mixer off and pull up your whisk you want it to not move.  (Not drip off the whisk at all).  If it slowly oozes down, then you need to go for another 30 seconds or a minute (on medium speed) until it gets to that "stiff" consistency.  Keep checking until it doesn't drip off the whisk at all.  

THIS ICING IS YOUR OUTLINE CONSISTENCY.  

  For your first few times I would suggest maybe decorating cookies with only 2-3 colors.

So you have your kitchen aid mixer full of your icing.  Separate it into 3 bowls (if you are doing 3 colors).  Your next step is to dye your icing whatever colors you want.  I just bought a little kit at Hobby Lobby that had like 12 different colors.  It's gel dye.  I don't know why, but I don't think you are supposed to use normal liquid food coloring.  So buy some gel at Hobby Lobby!  HA!  

You can use a toothpick or something to scoop out a little bit and add it to your bowl.  Stir it in until you have the color you want.

So when you decorate a cookie you are going to outline the cookie (with the outline consistency) and then fill it in with a thinner version of your icing (THIS IS CALLED YOUR FLOOD CONSISTENCY). 

So after you have your icing dyed the color you want, it's time to make your thinner consistency.  First, you need to take some of the color out because you need that thick consistency to outline with.  Go ahead and put some of this in a piping bag and it's ready to go.  Then take the remaining icing in your bowl and get ready to thin it.  For the "flood" icing you want to be able to draw a line in your icing (with a toothpick or something) and in 6 seconds it thins out and you can't see that you drew a line in it. (Your outline consistency is so thick that if you draw a line you will see it and it won't ever move).   My friend Emily suggested using a squirt bottle and this is a great idea.  So you just squirt like 5 sprays of water in the bowl and stir it together.  Take a toothpick and draw a line in your icing and see how long it takes for the line to go away.  Keep thinning (five or so sprays at a time) until the line disappears in 6 seconds.  Then fill up a little squeeze bottle (see mine in the picture...they are just from Hobby Lobby) with the flood icing.

Do that for each color.  You will have a piping bag of the outline consistency and then a little squeezy bottle of the flood.

Here is me getting ready to mix up all my icing.

And if you want to see something SUPER NERDY...check out this little cheat-sheet.  I don't do this all the time, but if I have a bunch of different cookies, it helps me figure out how much icing of each color I need and I kind of make an order of what I want to ice first (since sometimes you need the base to dry before you add the top, and you don't want to do those last and then have to just sit and wait).  

I like to outline with a number 3 tip.  (Before I started I had no clue there were even numbers to those, but the smaller the number the tinier the tip...I think the 2's and 1's are hard to do!)  You can go to the cake decorating aisle at Hobby Lobby and they have all the tips hanging up.

TIP - The silver tips are only $0.99 at Hobby Lobby and it is WORTH IT to have as many number 3 tips as you have colors...otherwise in the middle of decorating you have to switch them out, rinse them off, etc.  I learned that the hard way.  =(

And clearly this post has been in my drafts for awhile (sorry college friends who asked for this!) but here are some of my Easter cookies...

Getting started...letting some of the bases dry...

TIP - Toothpicks are my friend!  Sometimes you have to help the flood icing go all the way to the edges.  You can get it close, but sometimes I use a toothpick to help get it everywhere I want it to go.

For the dots (like in these carrots) you just outline your cookie and flood it with your color (outlined in orange, flood in orange).  Then immediately without letting the orange flood dry, I used my white flood icing and put dots in the wet orange flood icing.  That's how it looks like this.  I think it's called "wet on wet" technique?

If you want to add some icing to the top of your base (like the Easter bunnies) then you just need to let the base dry for awhile (like while you are working on other cookies) and then you can
 add to the top.

Hope that gets some of you girls started...I know that was a jumbly rambly rant!  If you have any other questions just message me on facebook or email me!  =)  And if my grandpa or my dad actually read this post and got to the bottom and is reading this now...I'll surprise you with a big batch of COOKIES!