I bet you thought I had given up on this blog. I kind of thought the same thing. I’ve been debating whether or not to take a very long hiatus — or whether to keep my beloved blog limping along. I’m choosing to keep it limping along. I just love it too much and don’t want to say goodbye just because I’m in a ridiculously busy season of my life. So you can expect the once-every-couple-months post, but that may be about it for a while! Full time job, baking hobby, social life — I’ve found that I can’t keep all three going strong! But I’ll continue to try!
Mardi Gras is next Tuesday (the 9th, for those of you date-minded people). The Midwest isn’t big on Mardi Gras, but I try to make something each year to celebrate. This year I took the easiest possible way out (read: no king cake!) and made sugar cookies.
If you are a new to decorating with royal icing, here are some helpful tips and links:
- I used my grandma’s sugar cookie recipe, which is listed below. Another good cut-out cookie recipe can be found at Bridget’s wonderful Bake at 350 [1].
- I used a royal icing recipe from Annie’s Eats [2], which is listed below.
- If you are new to decorating with royal icing, please visit this post by Annie’s Eats [3], which will teach you about outlining and flooding. Bake at 350 [4] is also a great resource for cookie decorating and ideas (I love Bridget’s book, too!).
Here are the specifics on how I made these cookies:
- I used a fleur de lis cookie cutter. I don’t remember where I bought it.
- I outlined and flooded the cookies with plain white icing. Easy peasy, right?
- Then I decorated the cookies with green, yellow, and purple sugar. Simple dimple, right?
- That’s it. Clearly I did not step up my game for these!
- One thing to note — the colors from the sugars may bleed into the icing. So if that bothers you (heyyy, fellow Type-As!), make and decorate these as close to your serving time as possible.
Omi’s Sugar Cookies
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon nutmeg
Beat butter and sugar. Add eggs, sour cream, and nutmeg. Add dry ingredients gradually. Chill the batter overnight or for at least 4 hours. Roll out dough and cut with cookie cutters. Bake at 350F until golden (in true fashion, my grandma didn’t give a specific baking time. I baked the cookies for about 8 minutes). My fleur de lis cookies were huge — so if you want a lot of these cookies, double or triple this batch of dough. It all depends on how big your cookies are.
White Royal Icing
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 Tablespoons meringue powder
5 Tablespoons water
Directions:
Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the sheen has disappeared and the icing has a matte appearance (about 7-10 minutes). Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl to an air-tight container. This will be the stiffest consistency of the icing, and at this point it is still too stiff to use for decorating. Add water a very small amount at a time and stir by hand until fully incorporated. Continue until the icing has reached a consistency appropriate for piping. Note: I made two batches of this icing because my cookies were so big.