With Valentine’s Day a week away, it’s time for decorating cookies! My wife made a nice selection of cut out sugar cookies which we packed up and took to my daughter’s house along with a nice selection of sprinkles. She made a batch of royal icing and her girls helped us decorate them.
Royal icing, made with confectioner’s sugar, meringue powder, water, and vanilla is a little different that the buttercream icing we’ve used before. It’s a little runnier at first, but then hardens nicely in less than an hour. While it’s still kind of liquid-y, you can dot it with another color or shape it with a toothpick for special effect. The sprinkles sink in nicely, too.
We had four colors of icing to work with: white, light pink, dark pink, and purple. The girls, aged five and three (the one-year-old was taking a timely nap), were more concerned about quantity than quality. They piped on plenty of icing and heaped on piles of sprinkles. Along with traditional miniature hearts and pink sugar, you’ll notice we had some unicorn heads.
Not every cookie that we decorated is pictured above. Some were eaten as soon as they were decorated. A few broke, so I had to eat them. I have no idea how that happened. A whole bunch of those teeny tiny little decorating balls rolled onto the floor. I have no idea how that happened either. But I know the family dog quickly took care of them.
We popped most of these cookies into the freezer to make sure the icing was hardened. Separated by sheets of wax paper, many but not all of them will make it to Valentine’s Day.
Part two of Valentine’s cookie decorating is coming up next week. The grandsons are up next. I have a feeling they’ll have a little less patience but a much bigger appetite.
Waite for it... 