Make this easy royal icing recipe for sugar cookies and you can decorate beautiful sugar cookies for any occasion! Im sharing all my tips & tricks to give you the confidence you need to try this technique yourself!
I didnt like sugar cookies with royal icing for years but thats only because I had only ever tried ones that tasted like cardboard with an edible cement icing on top that was hard enough to break a tooth. But then my friend Tiffany entered my life with her delicious edible works of art and showed me that there was a way to have your cake (erm, cookie?) and eat it too.
So I finally had to figure out royal icing for sugar cookies on my own. But armed with this classic royal icing recipe and my favorite cut out sugar cookie recipe, I realized its much more doable than I previously thought!
Thick vs. Thin Royal Icing
I like to start off with a stiffer, thick consistency icing because its easy from there to thin the icing out to a flood consistency just by continuing to add a little water. A thicker royal icing should be spreadable and easy to pipe. It reminds me of the consistency of toothpaste or very soft cream cheese.
To color the icing, divide it between separate bowls for each color you want. Mix in gel food coloring (I prefer AmeriColor or Chefmaster colors) until you get the shade you want.
You can use lighter colors first, then build on that color with darker colors to save yourself dirtying a separate bowl for every color. I will start with light pinks, blues, yellows, or greens, then move to darker reds, purples, oranges, etc.
Once colored, you can use the thick icing to pipe borders to decorate your cookies or go ahead and thin out the icing to a flood consistency by adding additional water a little at a time and stirring well after each addition.
For flooding, the royal icing should be thinned out enough to melt in on itself in about 10-15 seconds when you run a knife through it.
Think about the viscosity of honey or shampoo to help you gage flooding consistency. It should melt in on itself in about 10 seconds but not be so thin that it will run off the sides of the cookie.
If you go too far and add too much water to your flood icing it will be too thin. But you can save it by adding a spoonful or two of the thicker consistency icing and mixing that in.
Using Thick Royal Icing
When I was just starting out with royal icing, I found it much easier to use thick royal icing to pipe borders around the edges of my cookies, then fill them in with thinner flood icing. The thicker icing border helps create a barrier to hold in the flood consistency icing, which is advantageous if your flood icing is a little thinner than you meant it to be. The thicker consistency royal icing can also be good for piping some details on more intricate designs.
The main downsides of this approach is that it takes a little more effort and forethought, and the border of thicker icing is sometimes visible in the finished cookie. Its also less forgiving if you have a shaky hand, but its a great learning approach if this is your first time using royal icing.