Sugar Cookie Tutorial part 2

Back to your regularly scheduled post! I finally got a chance to decorate those cookies today. So, lets just get started because this is going to be a long post.

First gather your ingredients for the icing. I use a glace icing instead of a royal type icing. Royal dries really really hard and it puts some people off and can sometimes have a funky taste because of the meringue powder. This glace dries firm and set but not rock hard and does not have the meringue powder taste.

I got this recipe from www.cakecentral.com as well - it is not an original recipe of mine.

Glace Recipe:
4 cups powdered sugar
4 Tablespoons light corn syrup
4 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon clear extract flavoring (I used almond)
Mix all ingredients together. If it is feeling too stiff add more corn syrup or a little more milk.

When thinning your icing make sure that you go slow - too much and then you have to add more powdered sugar etc... vicious cycle (not that *I* would know about that! haha!)

This recipe gives you a slightly clear looking icing. To make it have more color and body add 20 drops of White food color. Wilton makes a white that you can get at your local craft store - I use A LOT of white so I purchased a BIG bottle.

So, now its time to color your icing. I'm pretty passionate about this. I love COLOR! I love deep full color! To get that color you MUST use a gel food coloring. The liquid stuff that you buy in the grocery store is NOT GOING TO WORK. It will water down the icing and change the whole consistency, you will not get the color saturation that you want. So, definately go to your local craft store and buy the Wilton gel - it lasts forever and you get great color.

So, now I have my icing mixed - green and white only for this project and I have all my cookies layed out on my countertop with easy clean up parchment paper covering my countertop. In case you forgot - I love parchment paper!

I like to use disposible pastry bags (purchased at your local craft store) and I also like to use piping tips (I use a number 3) - if you don't have these things you can use a zippy bag with the corner cut off. The icing that you will use in a pastry bag will be thicker icing for the outlines.

Next you will want to thin the remaining icing. To do this you can just add a little bit of water and stir. Check for consistency by dropping a glob back into the bowl - if the glob disappears by the count of 3 you should be good. Quicker than that and it might be too thin, longer than that and it might be too thick.

I use these squeeze bottles for my "flood icing". I think it makes it much easier to control, especially when you are using mulitple colors for each cookie.

Outline your cookies. I like to outline them all at once.

If you want to use sugars there are a couple ways to do this. The main thing to remember is this - sugar will stick to whatever is wet. So, if you have wet icing on your cookie - that is where the sugar is going to stick. And, in the exact opposite it will not stick to anything that is dry - so icing that is dry or a cookie with no icing on it etc....

I personally hate the shaker part of the sugar topper so I take those off immediately and then I pour all the sugar into a small plastic container.

Here I have taken a cookie that I outlined - outlined only and then I poured the sugar all over the cookie making sure to completely cover the edges where the outline was. I left this to dry for a while just like this. The middle of this cookie does not have anything on it, so even though the sugar is sitting there, its not going to stick there.

Once dry, I shook off the excess (kinda like glitter!) - and this is what I was left with - pretty....

These were the 2 that I did and then I filled the middles with the "flood" icing.

This is another technique that I love to use. You can add so much character and depth to your cookies. First you outline your cookie and then you flood your cookie and then you take another color of flood icing and just place small drops on the wet main color. The drops will sink into the main color looking like polka dots.
Now you want to grab a toothpick and drag the pick from the top of the dot all the way through to the bottom and you get a great heart - CUTE!

Here is another version of the same technique - use 2 (or more) colors of flood consistency icing and make stripes (any direction that you want).
Grab a toothpick and drag the pick through the icing back and forth (picking up the pick at each end) in the opposite direction of your stripes. (stripes are vertical, drag pick horizontal). You will get this really cool effect:

Here are all my cookies done and decorated - use your imagination and go crazy! Hopefully I will have time to decorate some easter cookies and get some more variety of color.

Make sure to let them dry completely before trying to move them - usually takes about 12 hours. Plan ahead!

I think they look fantastic and tomorrow morning I am going to be Rock Star Wife #1 at my hubby's work!
I hope these tutorials have helped you move past stress and fear of sugar cookies - they can be so much fun - and YUMMY!!! Let me know if you use any these ideas - I would love to see your crafty cookies! (If there are any left to take pics of!)