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.

Before frosting a cake, let it cool completely about 4 hours. Clean the cake of loose crumbs, brushing them off with the pastry brush or your hand. To secure the cake, put a dollop of frosting directly on the plate, this will keep the cake from moving around as you work. To keep the plate clean, tuck strips of waxed paper under the edge of the cake. Spread about 1/2 cup of frosting on top of the first layer. Place the second layer on the frosted layer. Spread a thin coating of frosting on the sides of the cake to seal in any crumbs. Add a thicker coat of frosting to the sides of the cake. Then, frost the sides again, swirling and building up the top edge about a quarter inch above the top of the cake. Spread the remaining frosting on the top of the cake, blending the frosting at the edge. Remove the strips of waxed paper. If time permits, let the frosting set an hour before slicing the cake.