Last night I decorated my sugar cookies with a lovely, shiny royal icing. I piped little polka dots on them and set them to dry overnight. When I looked at them this morning they are no longer shiny and there are cracks in the icing. They look just awful! What have I done wrong? I followed the recipe from Sweetopia's site. I will have to start all over today as they are for my nephew's christening this weekend. So disappointed! Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Make glacé instead of RI (there's a recipe for Toba Garett's glacé in the recipe section here). It has a little corn syrup in it, so it won't crack (and tastes a whole lot better, in my opinion). If you let them dry for a day or two you can stack them between layers of waxed paper.

Royal icing won't dry really shiny, it will get a bit dull. If you overbeat it, it will get really dull and can develop cracks, holes etc. I would need to take a look, but I suppose you have overbeaten it.

As a tip - most RI decorated cookies are photographed still wet to keep this shiny look. It helps if you dry the RI fast - for example under lightbulb - but as I said, it is not a really shining icing.

Thanks for the feedback! I tried a little trick...I took some corn syrup and coated the cookies with it using a paint brush. Nice and shiny and dried so that they are not too sticky (will probably be even better by Sunday. For the next batch, I made the icing using corn syrup that you suggested and the cookies look so lovely now! I will try to post a photo. Thanks again for your responses!

Yes, I'd really love to see a pic! I'm glad this worked out for you!