Hi,
Using the "how-to bake and decorate cookies", at this site, I baked snowmen cookies. They look really cute, the royal icing looks perfect--smooth with a slight shine to it. However, it's so hard! When you bite into the cookie, the icing cracks and seems almost like candy. My question is, did I leave them out to dry too long? The receipe says to let them dry for 18 hours before adding anything on top of the icing. I left the cookies out on my counter all that time, then added the snowman's scarf and features and left them out on the counter another 12 hours. Should I have put them in a covered container to dry? Maybe I left them out, uncovered, for so long that they got stale?
What's the rule for letting cookies dry? Cover them...OR leave them in the open.
Thanks for any help. I do enjoy this site, as everyone seems so willing to share their experience.

Linda

what cookie recipe did you use? maybe it doesn't have enough butter in it?

The fats in the cookie should keep the icing firm on the top, but ever so slightly soft where it touches the cookie. When you bite into it, it won't "shatter" in your mouth, but bites off evenly.

They won't have become overly dried out in that short amount of time. I keep mine out uncovered and then package them within 2 days or so.

Royal icing is made to dry really hard.

Thanks for your comments on the icing. I will try a different recipe and see how it goes.

Linda

Cake Princess--

I use Alice's Cookie Icing and I did not get the smooth results that you show. I added water to it to thin it a bit but it NEVER dried!! Can you think of what I may be doing wrong??? I LOVE the taste of it--but it's not practical to have to have cookies sit out for 3 days to dry through.

Thanks!

Lisa

I agree with that last post. I just tried Alice's recipe and it is delicious, but did not harden. I also could not get it to turn red no matter how much red paste I added.

Hi,
In trying to find the "perfect" icing for my snowmen cookies--yesterday I tried an icing recipe from Toba Garrett's cookie book, the one she says she uses 85% of the time. It is softer than the first icing I tried (the one from the How-To-Decorate-Cookies here at this site) and it does taste very good. It has been drying on the snowmen since last night around 8:00. That's over 18 hours, and now it is very hard to the touch, but if I press on it, it does tend to indent. But to me it tastes like the icing you might find on the inside of a sandwich cookie. So I guess taste is pretty important in the overall cookie. The Toba Garrett icing is also
shiny and extremely easy to make. This particular icing doesn't use the meringue powder, just milk, light corn syrup and powdered sugar.

So...today I am making gingerbread cookies and using the icing left over from my first batch of royal icing. Gingerbread cookies seem much easier to make!

I hope everyone is having a great Saturday.

Why can't I find that recipe on this site (the glace recipe)? I searched the web and found it on baking 911, but I tried for a while to find it in the recipe section.

It appears to be the same recipe as "poured cookie icing" from the wilton website, but the wilton one is a smaller amount. Anyway, we tried it today and it was really fun to work with. I'll try to post my photos. My little guy is allergic to eggs and therefore royal icing and Alice's cookie icing are not okay for him to eat. He was thrilled to be able to frost his special sugar cookie. So glad I found the recipe!