Here is my Easy Royal Icing recipe made with meringue powder. It sets quickly, but doesn’t dry so hard that it breaks your teeth to bite into it! Royal Icing makes decorating sugar cookies so much fun! If you need a good sugar cookie recipe, you can find mine here!
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract- you could also use lemon, peppermint, etc.
Food coloring, optional
Directions
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, add powdered sugar, meringue powder, and vanilla extract. Turn the mixer on the lowest speed, and slowly pour in the water. As the mixture combines, turn up the speed to medium/medium-high. Beat for about a minute and a half. When you lift up the whisk, the icing should drizzle down and melt back into the bowl in 5-10 seconds. If it’s too thick, add a tiny bit more water.
Use food coloring to color the icing whatever color(s) you’re wanting. Divide and thin the icing as needed.
Tips For Icing Sugar Cookies
For sugar cookies, you will want two different consistencies of icing. One for outlining the cookie (consistency of toothpaste) and one for filling the cookie, or flood icing (the consistency of shampoo)
I put my outlining icing into piping bags with a Wilton #2 tip. This makes a good border on your cookie so that the flood icing doesn’t pool over the edges of the cookie
For the flood icing, I like to use the Wilton squeeze bottles that I linked above
For coloring the icing, divide out enough for each color for the entire amount you”ll need for both the outlining and flood icing. Color the entire section at once, then separate out the flood icing and thin it out from there, so that the colors will be an exact match.
When thinning the flood icing, you’ll want to add DROPS of water at a time. It doesn’t take much to thin it out, and it can turn too runny very quickly. Remember you can always add more water. Some people like to use a spray bottle to add the water so that it’s easier to control how much you’re adding at a time.
I like to start coloring the icing with my lightest color and mix it in a 2 C. glass measuring cup, then you can just mix each additional darker color in the same cup since it’ll just mix in. Using a measuring cup also makes it easy to pour the icing into the piping bags and squeeze bottles.
The icing takes about 2-3 hours to dry completely. It will be dry to the touch within 10-15 minutes, but to fully dry the cookies will need to sit for a couple hours.
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