Royal Icing Archives

Growing up, I remember the smell of Christmas cookies baking in our gold enamel Kenmore oven. And, the familiar smell of a few burned cookie’s edges, was the closest thing to what I imagine a Hallmark movie set smells likes. If we had smellavision. And, the best part of sugar cookies was the icing my mom made for the stacks and stacks of sugar cookies. My mom had her fav recipe, but today I want to share my my favorite royal icing recipe.

Royal Icing Recipe

There was always a date on the calendar dedicated to baking and frosting sugar cookies. We sorted the cookies on the counter by shape. The complicated reindeer antlers rarely stayed intact from cookie sheet to wax paper.

But, we always got to eat the cookies that failed to nail the perfect landing.

My mom set aside an evening to frost sugar cookies. It was a family event with sprinkles and primary color tinted icing.

My sister took her time and outlined every cookie with black icing.

I preferred the slap and slather icing application.

The sugar cookie tradition continued with my family with a few changes to the basics. I like a thicker sugar cookie dough than my mom. And, then there is the difference between my mom’s icing recipe and mine. My mom’s icing was more like a glaze. She might hav watered it down a bit too much to frost all of those cookies.

I needed to find my own favorite royal icing recipe.

For years I used a sugar cooking icing recipe from Martha Stewart. Martha’s icing recipe was made with powdered sugar, a few drops of water and an egg white. The egg white always made me nervous. The last thing I needed during the holidays was a salmonella outbreak at the annual Secret Santa party.

Of course, I never thought twice about eating a tube of raw cookie dough with my girlfriends in middle school.

Sidenote: I read this article by a food blogger about the safety of raw eggs.

And, then a few years ago I graduated to a royal icing recipe and discovered the magic of meringue powder and corn syrup.