Easter Egg Royal Icing Sugar Cookies – A Dedicated Post!

Posted by Lisa | Sweet 2 Eat Baking on March 1, 2012

Royal Iced Easter Egg Cookies

Is that you I hear sniggering at my Easter egg cookies?! Hehe! This is my very first attempt at decorating cookies so please bear with my unprofessional-ness results. More on the cookies later.

But first, this post is dedicated to two wonderful ladies who live across the pond in the US. Namely, the wonderful Pam from Cookie Crazie and Karen who owns a cookie decorating shop called Karen’s Cookies but also has a blog, Karen’s Cookies Blog. This is quite a random story so make yourself a cuppa’, get comfy, and put your feet up!

I absolutely love visiting dessert blogs. Whether they’re concentrated on just cakes, cupcakes, cookies, or general desserts, you’ll find me there. I love to participate and comment too. I love receiving comments on my own blog so I always make an effort to comment on others’ blogs too. I like to make you feel loved (even if you do have 1,583,736,585+ comments! LOL). I have quite a strange way of finding new blogs too. Sometimes I google something specific by blogspot.com sites, sometimes I click blogroll links, and most of the time I see your comments on someone else’s blog and click through to your blog and subscribe.

On the day that I found Pam’s Cookie Crazie blog, I don’t even remember how I found her as I was sucked into my cookie concentration mode. I loved what I saw so I immediately subscribed. I saw that Pam mainly used Americolor food colouring to colour her icing for her cookies. I have heard many great things about Americolor but as I’m based in the UK, the prices they charge this side of the pond isn’t great and I don’t think they stock and sell the full range here.

Lookit Pam’s vast Americolor range! Yowza!

I commented on Pam’s blog asking about Americolor. Pam responded to my comment quickly and so kindly offered to ship specific colours to me as she has friends with cookie decorating stores, how wonderful! We got chatting in email and Pam had an idea. She decided on a whim to let me choose $30 worth of Americolor food colouring from Karen’s Cookies store. I was sooooo speechless! Seriously, I didn’t know what to say to Pam to show my gratitude. There were no words that could describe how I felt! When I could string some readable words together, all I could muster was a thousand “thank you’s”. I feel so blessed to have found a new friend who, like me, loves to help.

I was really surprised that my parcel from Pam and Karen arrived just shy of one week from emailing my colour list to Pam. I am in love, the colours are as fab as raved by many people and Karen has gained a new customer for life. I can’t wait to place an order with Karen. Her web store is fantastic, so much variety and the prices are great too. I was very surprised to receive 21 Americolor gel food colours in total.

Please do check out Karen’s Cookies store for a full range of everything needed to create beautiful cookies and more. Also, check out Karen’s Cookies blog, and of course, Pam’s Cookie Crazie blog too. Both of these ladies are insanely talented cookie decorators. I want to be like them when I grow up, hehe!

Pam and Karen: If you happened to be reading this, I’d like to take a moment to thank you yet again for everything you have done for me. You both are two wonderful ladies. I really cannot thank you enough from the bottom of my heart. I really am ecstatic! Bless you both.

Back to the cookies. I made these cookies with my wonderful new Americolors that were gifted to me. I’m very impressed with the colours and the quality. I’ve already noted that I only needed a tiny amount of colour to get a deep shape. In fact, I was going for a pastel colour and only put 1 tiny drop in my royal icing and got a colour which was too deep. Amazing! My other paste colours are concentrated but not in the way Americolor is. Very impressed indeedy!

I have been busy researching wildly on how to decorate cookies. Some state a thicker royal icing for outlining and a 10 second icing for flooding. Others recommend a 10 second icing for both. I tried to outline the other day, as a practice, and found a royal icing recipe in one of my books which stated 2 medium egg whites to 500g of icing/powdered/confectioners sugar. This was really too thick but as I didn’t know any better at the time, I attempted to use it. Obviously, it didn’t work and I was disappointed (mainly in myself and my abilities) but I don’t give up easily!

The next day, I heavily researched (when ironically, my colours arrived). I felt more confident in myself. I made a 10 second icing and divided up to colour. I put my royal icing in my piping bags and away I went. I did made a couple of mistakes outlining at first but the fantastic thing is it can be scraped off. Wohoo!

I really enjoyed decorating these cookies. I have the bug for cookie decorating now, and colours. It’s addictive! Recipe below:

Sugar Cookie Recipe

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Prep Time: 15 mins

Cook Time: 12-15 mins

Yield: 25 large or 40 small cookies

Simple no spread sugar cookie recipe. Ideal for use on intricate cutters, holds its shape well when baked.

Ingredients:

FOR THE COOKIE DOUGH:

185g (6½ oz) unsalted butter, softened
240g (8½ oz) caster (superfine) sugar
390g (14 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
1½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp salt
1 medium egg

FOR THE ROYAL ICING:

500g (1lb 2oz) icing (confectioners’) sugar
2 egg whites
gel food colouring in desired colours

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 160°C, 325°F, Gas Mark 3. Grease and line two baking trays (alternatively, use baking/parchment paper, silicone liners or Silpat or similar).
Beat together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until creamy.
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and add one half of it to the butter mixture and beat until combined. Add the rest of the flour and mix to a dough.
Roll the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film (plastic wrap) and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the dough to 3-4mm thick. Using your desired cutter(s), cut out shapes and place on your prepared baking trays. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes on the trays before moving to a cooling rack.
While the cookies are cooling, use this time to whip up a batch of royal icing. First, sift the icing sugar (confectioners/powdered sugar) into a large bowl then slowly add the egg whites and thoroughly mix the two together.
Keep mixing until the icing is glossy and is the correct consistency. To test: run a knife through the middle of the icing approx. 1″ deep. If the icing forms a flat surface between 5-10 seconds, it is the correct consistency. Some people prefer a thicker consistency for outlining and allow for a flat surface between 15-20 seconds.
Transfer the icing into separate bowls – as many as you have colours. Apply a few drops of gel or paste food colouring until you reach your desired shade.
If you prefer two different consistencies, divide icing into two – one for outlining (15-20 second icing), and one for flooding (10 second icing) to ensure both are the same shade.
Decorate as desired. Leave to set overnight. I tend to find that my icing takes longer to dry as I work in humid conditions. My royal icing takes 24-48 hours to set completely.

Don’t forget to visit Pam and Karen. Click the images below:

If you managed to read this entire blog post, well done to you!!

Having an eggcellent time!