How To Decorate Cookies with Icing: The Easiest, Simplest Method

Skip the royal icing. Skip the pastry bags and the piping tips. Embrace your lazy inner baker. If you covet those glossy, perfectly iced sugar cookies but never felt like your pastry skills were quite on par with doing it yourself, I think I can help. This is the simplest, most straight-forward way to decorate cookies with icing that I know.

The Easiest, Simplest Method for Icing

I am here to tell you that it's entirely possible and perfectly legit to decorate cookies with a simple icing of powdered sugar and milk using squeeze bottles in place of piping bags. There are some advantages to using the traditional royal icing, which I'll talk about below, but for most of us home bakers — those of us who just want some pretty cookies to share with our friends and family — plain old sugar icing works just fine.

Ingredients1 batch sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, or other cut-out cookies for icing

For the border icing:1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or other flavoring extract
2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons milk or water
Food coloring, optional

For the flood icing:1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla or other flavoring extract
2 1/2 – 3 tablespoons milk or water
Food coloring, optional

EquipmentSmall mixing bowls
Mixing utensils
Squeeze bottles – 1 for the border icing and 1 for each color of flood icing
Small funnel
Parchment paper

Instructions

1. Clear some counterspace: Iced cookies need at least 24 hours to dry, so clear a good amount of counterspace or tablespace where you can ice the cookies and leave them undisturbed. Cover the counter with parchment paper.
2. Arrange cookies for icing: Allow fresh-baked cookies to cool completely, then arrange all your cookies over the parchment paper. You might find it helpful to leave a small workspace clear in front of you where you can move each cookie as you’re working on it.
3. Prepare the border icing: Mix together the powdered sugar, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons of milk or water for the border icing using a spoon or a fork. It should be quite thick, and if you drizzle a little from your spoon, the ribbon should hold for a few second before melting back into the icing. This border icing should be just thick enough to pour easily. If desired, add food coloring to this border icing now.

source :-icing

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