Frosting

Picture-perfect cookies like this get their beautiful finish from glazing . Anyone can do this technique. All you need is a spoon and some really nice icing . So here, I've got some royal icing that I've actually thinned down a little bit so that it's a little bit easier to work with with just some water. And I've got my cookies laid out on this nice little rack above some wax paper so that any extra glaze will just drip down right onto my wax paper. And then I'm just gonna take a spoon, and actually just spoon on some of the icing like that. And I'm just gonna have a little paintbrush like this, and this is perfect for just kind of smoothing the icing all the way to the edges. If you wanted a little bit more of kind of a controlled, sort of professional tailored look for your cookies, super easy. You just get out some of your royal icing that you have in a piping bag. This is the thicker stuff that you haven't been down to do your glazing . Just au naturale royal icing . And I'm just going to put it in a piping bag with a nice round tip, and I'll show you you can use this to outline your cookie. You could either use a contrasting color here like I'm using the red and I will use the green glaze on the inside. Or you could use the same color just to make them really uniform. I'm just gonna outline it like that. And then once I've got my outline done, I'll just pour in some of my thinned royal icing right into the middle like that. And then using my little trusty brush, I'm just gonna push it right to the edge of my outline. Now you wanna make sure you do this while your outline is still wet because what'll happen is, as you push the glaze to the edges, it kind of melds with the outline, so you get a nice tight finish. This is like creating a dam with the icing and then flooding it inside with the glaze . So I can either use a contrasting color like this, but if you use the same color, no one would ever know that you did the dam and flooding technique. They would just think that you happen to be a really good glazer. So the outer dam really prevents the icing from going over the sides of the cookie, giving you a nice clean edge. And then once you've got your cookie all glazed, you can always add a little embellishment, and you can have fun with this. You can use all sorts of sugars. You can use sprinkles, little beads like this, even little trees. So you can either add the embellishments, or you know what? I actually like the cookies with just the glaze alone. Either way, it is a simple technique for a simply elegant look.

When choosing which frosting to use on cookies, it depends on what you are looking for. Here are 3 types you may want to consider: creamy, royal icing , powdered sugar glaze or icing . Creamy frosting made with white shortening makes the brightest colors when food coloring is added. Creamy frosting doesn't set up as hard as others. Royal icing gives a more long- lasting finish to cookies and often is used to decorate cookies, used as ornaments in decorative items such as gingerbread houses. Made with meringue powder and powdered sugar, it can be thinned with water to use as a glaze . Finally, powdered sugar glaze icing is made with confectioners or powdered sugar and a liquid, often milk. It is the simplest icing to make and is best used for decorative glaze on cookies.

Decorating with glaze ; a thin, even coat of icing adds color to a cookie's surface. Here are 2 different methods: With baked cookies on a wire rack, spoon colored icing evenly over the entire cookie, letting it spread over the edges. For another more controlled method, fill a pastry bag with glaze and outline a shape on the cookie. Next, carefully spoon more glaze inside the outlined shape filling and spreading the icing just to the edge.