Butter cream Icing

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla or other desired flavoring
2 pounds confectioners' sugar
I use this recipe adding color as needed. Decorating cookies and let them sit 24 hours to dry.

Linda

To make sure sugar sticks, you can paint the cookies with a little egg white/water before you bake them and sprinkle the sugar on that. Bonus is they will be very shiny too. And this is the best egg free decorating icing I have ever used.

Sugar Cookie Icing

Prep Time: 15 Minutes Ready In: 15 Minutes
Servings: 12

"This icing dries hard and shiny and the colors stay bright. Choose as many different food colorings as you desire."

Ingredients:
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
assorted food coloring

Directions:
1. In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and almond extract until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.
2. Divide into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity. Dip cookies, or paint them with a brush.

Seagrass, I sprinkle sugar before baking, it kinds of melts onto the top of the cookie from the heat and sticks that way. I do put the cookies on parchment or a silpat because I haven't found a way not to sprinkle the whole darned sheet, or have sugar come off before baking.

I have tried brushing with a bit of milk and a soft brush and that works better than just dry cookies.

I use a buttercream icing like Linda posted above, then let the cookies set until the icing is dry, several hours.

There is also a very hard royal icing recipe that takes meringue powder instead of egg whites, you can buy the stuff at the hobby shops or Walmart, where they sell Wilton items. It gets very hard, the "cement" that holds gingerbread houses together. I don't care very much for it, but it's great to decorate with. I cover the bowl with a damp towel while I'm using portions of this and it's great for things like "flooding" large areas of cookie. If you make an outline with frosting, you can fill a squeeze bottle (like catsup is served from) and fill in the outline more easily than you can with a knife if you use this stuff. Pretty, but it doesn't taste as good as the buttercream!

Royal Icing Using Meringue Powder:

4 cups (440 grams) confectioners' (powdered or icing) sugar

3 tablespoons (30 grams) meringue powder

1/2 teaspoon extract (vanilla, lemon, almond)

1/2 - 3/4 cup (120 - 180 ml) warm water

In the the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the confectioners' sugar and meringue powder until combined. Add the water and beat on medium to high speed until very glossy and stiff peaks form (5 to 7 minutes). If necessary, to get the right consistency, add more powdered sugar or water. To cover or 'flood' the entire surface of the cookie with icing, the proper consistency is when you lift the beater, the ribbon of icing that falls back into the bowl remains on the surface of the icing for a few seconds before disappearing.
The icing needs to be used immediately or transferred to an airtight container as royal icing hardens when exposed to air. Cover with plastic wrap when not in use.

Makes about 3 cups

Annie

Thanks to you all for your help. I have never used so much flour, sugar and butter all in one day in my entire life. I decided since I am finally feeling better this Christmas I want to bake cookies to give as gifts to people who have helped me through my 2-year ordeal with breast cancer.

This cookie baking is not easy for a novice! I do have help from a KA stand-mixer. The drug I'm on causes a lot of joint pain and my hands don't have the strength I want.

When we were living in Holland, I bought 2 handmade wooden molds for Dutch Speculaas cookies. I mixed the dough for those last night. The spice mixture smells so good. One of the molds is shaped like Sinterklass (their Santa Claus) and the other a traditional Dutch windmill. I'm wondering how that dough will come out. It was very dry, almost crumbly but the instructions said to knead it into a ball and refrigerate overnight to let the spices mellow.

Then I'm also baking sugar cookies cut with a big Chrstmas tree cutter and I want to decorate those to be festive - hence the frosting and colored sugar. And I have the cutest pan that turns out mini-cakes in the shape of gingerbread houses that get dusted with powdered sugar and piped with some frosting on the windows and doors.

That's the trio I'm going to give to my friends and neighbors who have been there for me the past 2 years.

Thanks again for your advice.

seagrass

Seagrass, that's a lovely idea, and I'm glad you are feeling enough better to do that.

My kids also liked to beat up an egg white until frothy, add a cup of powdered sugar and 1/2 tsp cream of tartar and food coloring as you wish. This makes a "paint" that could be painted on with a watercolor paint brush. Or just an egg yolk and a teaspoonful of water and teaspoon full of sugar, mixed with food color makes a passable cookie paint.

I still haven't made your oyster dressing, I'm thinking of a rolled pork loin with that rolled up inside, now that I just put a whole darned pig in the freezer..

Annie

Seagrass, like Annie said, I'm also glad you're feeling better so you can embrace the spirit of the holiday. I've had several years I simply couldn't manage it, so having the energy to do that is a gift. Happy Holidays to you.

Well, my energy is flagging lol. I usually hit a wall around 2 pm. A cup of tea and a bit of sitting down to rest should help with revival. Some of the people I want to give cookies to are leaving at the end of the week to travel other places and so those are my priorities, and then make more batches. I'm worried about my prototype Speculaas cookies...

I have all of the ingredients for the buttercream frosting that Linda posted so that's what I'm going to mix up next. I don't have any corn syrup or meringue powder and it's pouring down rain. Even my dogs won't go out.

There is an organic produce market in the town where I shop and I thought I might find some "safe" eggs there if I needed to make more frosting I could try the paint Annie posted. That sounds like fun. I just don't want to take a chance with raw eggs - nothing like a gift of salmonella, huh?

Annie, I have never considered stuffing pork loin with oyster stuffing but I don't think it would be a bad thing. There was a butcher shop around here many years or so ago who stuffed boneless pork loin roasts with his homemade pork sausage (just made a big hole through the middle of the whole roast and stuffed the bulk sausage through it). That was so good!! Pork stuffed with pork lol.

seagrass

If you can't find an egg product you are comfortable with, then definitely give the icing recipe I posted a try. It can be thinned to almost water color transparency or left quite thick. I use any variety of artists brushes, small plastic bags as piping tools, toothpicks etc and that icing works well with all of them.

But most important, take care of yourself and rest when you need to! You are giving a gift of love and caring :-)

Alexa

That icing recipe sounds really good. When we were kids, we used to make a kind of boiled white icing or 7-minute frosting. I made that a couple years ago, but it seemed way stickier than I remembered.

How do you lay out your cookies to dry? Or how do you store them until they're dry enough to stack? Ideally, I'd leave them on the dining room table, but my cat is not well behaved enough not to jump up for a look/see/taste.

Today, I brought home 2 copy paper boxes from work, intending to put the cookies in the lids and then cover with foil until they dry. That worked pretty good last year. Once they dried, I stacked them in containers with waxed paper in between.

Oh-oh - did I just hijack this thread by adding my own third question? But I would really like to know!

seagrass, I figured that if the cookies were painted first, and then baked, the egg got cooked. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Virginia, sorry, I just spread mine all over the counters and table. My cat is old and cantankerous and she doesn't care at all what I'm doing, she seldom even comes out of the basement.

Annie

The cookies I'm making to decorate are really big, so I'll just leave them on the cooling racks after I decorate them. The mini cakes are substantial, and the Speculaas cookies are large, too. I'm only making 5 packages (I live in a small world). 2 each of the 3 that I'm making - all for retired couples so they won't want too much.

Yes, I agree Annie that the egg white would be safe if it was baked on the cookie!!

seagrass