Cookie Decorating Recipes

We’ve recently revived our love of custom cookies here at Honey Crumb, after putting all cookie orders on hiatus for a couple of years. (We were swamped with wedding cake orders, and something had to give.) Now that the pandemic has given us a bit of downtime, what with all these postponed weddings and all, we’ve found ourselves busting out the Royal Icing and whipping up some cookies to decorate. We don’t drink while we work (!), but this is certainly the perfect activity that you can do at home while enjoying a glass of wine… So, without further ado, here are our favorite recipes for no-spread cookies, and Royal Icing.

No-Spread Butter Cookies

Makes 10-15 large, or 25-30 medium cookies

INGREDIENTS:

• 250 g unsalted butter

• 250 g granulated sugar (superfine is best)

• 1 large egg

• 1 tsp vanilla extract, or 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

• 500 g all-purpose flour (we use organic unbleached all-purpose flour, or organic pastry flour), plus more for dusting your work surface

EQUIPMENT:

• Electric mixer

• Spatula

• Plastic wrap

• Rolling pin

• Cookie cutters, or templates

• Sharp knife (if using templates)

• Baking sheets

• Baking parchment

METHOD:

Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy, in the bowl of your mixer.

Add the egg and vanilla, and mix until combined.

Sift the flour, and add to the bowl in two batches, mixing ONLY until the ingredients come together. (Don’t overmix!)

Scrape the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, flatten it out slightly, and seal tightly with the plastic wrap. Place into the fridge for 30 minutes.

Lightly sprinkle your worktable with flour, and use a rolling pin to roll out your dough to just over 1/8” thick. Cut out your shapes using cookie cutters, or trace around your templates with a sharp knife.

Place the cookies onto a baking sheet lined with parchment, and return to the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees F (180 C). Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, depending on size, until they are just beginning to turn golden brown on the edges. Allow the cookies to cool completely, and then store them in an airtight container until you’re ready to decorate.

FLAVOR VARIATIONS:

• Chocolate: Substitute 50g of the all-purpose flour with unsweetened cocoa powder

• Citrus: Add the finely grated zest of one lemon or orange, or 1/2 tsp of pure lemon oil

• Almond: Replace the vanilla extract with 1 tsp of almond extract

• Maple: Replace the vanilla extract with 1 tsp of maple extract

Royal Icing

Royal Icing is typically made with egg whites, but we prefer to make ours with meringue powder. That way, there’s no need to separate raw eggs or hunt down a carton of pasteurized egg whites — and best of all, this icing doesn’t dry super hard (like, break-your-teeth hard!) in the way that traditional Royal Icing does! Instead, it has a slightly softer bite, that’s perfect with our no-spread cookies (recipe above).

INGREDIENTS:

• 480 g (4 cups) powdered sugar (aka confectioner’s sugar), sifted

• 3 Tablespoons meringue powder (make sure it says “meringue powder” and NOT “egg white powder”)

• 7-10 Tablespoons of water, at room temp

• Gel food coloring (optional)

METHOD:

In the bowl of your mixer, using the whisk attachment, add all of the ingredients and beat at medium-high speed for 2 minutes.

I usually start with 7 tablespoons of water. Then, once the icing has been mixed together thoroughly, I lift up the whisk and watch the icing drizzle back down into the bowl. If it smooths out within 5-10 seconds, it’s perfect. If it’s too thick, and takes longer than 10 seconds to disappear into the rest of the icing, then add a little more water. If it’s too thin and disappears back into the icing completely within less than 5 seconds, you’ll need to add a little more powdered sugar (sifted). The amount of water you need is influenced by the humidity in the air, by the brand of sugar you use, by how you measure your sugar (weight or volume), etc. So, start with less water, and add more if you need it.

This icing will dry within 2-3 hours at room temperature. If you have a food dehydrator, you can place the cookies in there to reduce the drying time to ~30 mins. If you’re decorating cookies that will be shipped, and/or packaged (i.e. in cellophane bags or cookie bags), then I’d recommend letting the icing dry completely OVERNIGHT at room temp.

FLAVOR VARIATIONS:

Add 1 tsp of vanilla extract, or 1/2 tsp of vanilla bean paste, for a classic vanilla icing. Or, you can add 1/2 tsp of extract (e.g. maple, peppermint, lemon, rum, creme bouquet, lavender, lime, etc) to the icing. It’s best to do this at the start, when you add the ingredients to your mixer bowl, so that it doesn’t mess with the consistency of your icing at a later stage.

IMPORTANT:

Place a damp towel, kitchen cloth, or paper towel over your bowl of icing when you’re not working with it. Your icing will start to form a crust as soon as it’s been mixed, as it comes into contact with the air!