NWR: Making cookies tomorrow...

KellyBrian2013

... and came upon this recipe (Martha Stewart) for Royal Icing.
http://www.marthastewart.com/283929/royal-icing

It calls for TWO POUNDS of confectioner's (powdered) sugar. It  says the recipe yields five cups. That seems like a ridiculous amount of sugar to me.

Anyone have another frosting recipe that would be good on regular sugar cookies?

FTR: I'm planning on doing cranberry-orange cookies with an orange glaze and then, as is tradition, my little brother and I are making and frosting sugar cookies together

barrelbabe004

I used royal icing on mine this year because I wanted to do more intricate decorating. 
But I only used 2 egg whites, 2 tsp lemon juice and 3 cups powdered sugar.  That made enough to decorate about half of my cookies (I made a batch that supposedly made 60 cookies but I had a lot more than that.)

But royal icing isn't the best tasting.  I usually just use regular white frosting if I'm just doing frosting and sprinkles.

specialk84

Alton Brown's royal icing with egg whites:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/royal-icing-recipe/index.html

Royal icing with egg whites and with meringue powder: 

http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html

Lately I've been finding tons of errors in recipes on marthastewart.com. It's irritating.

MyUserName1

You do need lots of powdered sugar, but it sounds like that recipe makes TONS of icing.  Five cups is a lot. of. icing.

KellyBrian2013

I got a new laptop for Xmas last year and lost all of my past recipes. I used to do a different icing (powdered sugar, water, and milk... I think - and last year, I know I added a little bit of orange juice to flavor it, and it turned out pretty yummy.) but I have no idea where I found it.

We usually just dye a bunch of different colors and spread it on with a knife. Creative, I know. I was going to try a little bit more sophisticated cookies this year since my "little bro" is 17 and FI will be helping, too. So I was going to try the outlining/flooding method.

I've also found this recipe for a glaze: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/simple-cookie-glaze-recipe

MyUserName1

In that case, you might use all of the cups.

I'd try the Alton Brown recipe above.  Alton Brown knows his shizz.

barrelbabe004

I agree that flooding and outlining is a PITA and super time consuming... but they look good when they're done

KellyBrian2013

Who knew baking cookies could be so complicated!? ha.

Maybe I'll rethink the method we'll be using, since neither FI nor my brother are known for their patience with pastries. It looks like the King Arthur recipe is meant for use with a knife, so I'll probably stick to that one. Though I'll check out the Alton Brown one for sure.

Thanks everyone!

smbrend

I know I'm late on this, but my mom always just mixed milk in a bowl with powdered sugar- put in enough to make the frosting somewhat thick so it won't just run off the cookies.  Then we use food coloring to make red, blue, green or yellow frosting.  We used the very sophisticated knife method to decorate also.  They might not be the prettiest cookies ever, but they're still my favorite!