Adventures with Royal Icing

I never learn.

I see all the professionaly decorated sugar cookies on TV and in magazines and I think they're so pretty and creative and wonderful and I want to make them. And I want them to look exactly the same.

I have to admit, in the past I have decorated some very beautiful sugar cookies. But it's the type of thing that needs to be done on a regular basis, so you really get the hang of it and get into the groove of it.

It's been a while since I've done this. But I was so excited because I found so many nice cookie cutters and I made all these sugar and gingerbread cookies in these great Christmas shapes and I had great ideas for all the different colors of royal icing I would make and I would get everything organized and....

And then I fell and hurt my foot and everything seemed to be way too much trouble. My enthusiasm was waning, but I knew I had to decorate my cookies, especially the Nativity scene! So I got the idea that I would just make white icing and use colored sugar sprinkles. I guess this was a pretty decent idea.

Working with royal icing really isn't fun. I did alright for a while but then the icing start oozing out of the pastry bag, the colored sugar sprinkles were ending up in the wrong place, and my foot was hurting. But I have to say, some of my cookies came out pretty nicely. At the time I just didn't know why I was bothering because it seemed like so much trouble, but looking back on it it wasn't that bad, and they came out pretty nice. All in all it was fun. I do love trying new things and learning new techniques and whatnot. So it's not perfect, oh well.

The results! Gingerbread folks:

The Nativity, before and after:

Cream Cheese-Lemon Bows (Pg 156)

Don't be freaked out by my psychic abilities, but I can totally read your mind right now. You're thinking "Hey! Those don't look like bows!" Yeah. This is what they should look like:

Awwww, how pretty. It really would have been lovely if I could have made them look like that. But y'know, I'm still on my learning journey here.

As with my previous recipe (Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies) I was using the thin cream cheese, so I'm pretty sure the consinstency of the dough was not what it should've been. It was supposed to be piped out of a pastry bag into the shape of bows. Well, I tried.

Again, this was a first for me, and as with all baking projects, if the dough is not exactly as it should be, it won't work. Baking is a very particular science, after all. So I had a feeling the dough wasn't going to work with a pastry bag, and the tip I had probably wasn't big enough, but I tried anyway. And my results were.....interesting.

Not very pretty. Each bow I made looked a little better, and I know if I just practiced I could probably get the hang of it. But I didn't really feel like wasting all the dough by trying to make pretty bows.

After making the Snickerdoodles, I recognized the consistency of this Cream Cheese-Lemon dough as being a good consistency for drop cookies. So I rolled the dough into balls and rolled them in bright, festive, holiday colored decorating sugar. I have to say, I think they look really adorable, like little holiday jewels.

Even though I'm allergic to the cream cheese, I tried a tiny bit of the dough. It's really good! It has a nice little tart bite from the lemon, which compliments the cream cheese nicely.

The moral to these two cream cheese recipes is: follow the directions, for goodness sake. This is something I know, especially with baking, but I keep getting ahead of myself and thinking I can improvise. No. If the ingredients aren't exactly as listed, if the tools are different, if your oven temperature is uneven, it just doesn't work. But the other moral is: it probably still tastes good!

The Cream Cheese-Lemon Drops came out really nicely, even with the improvisation. Even when things go a little wrong, you can still make something good. Sometimes.

Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies (Pg 275)

This one was quite a challenge for me for a couple of reasons:

1) I had never made a blondie before, or for that matter, blondie's dark sister, brownie.

2) My food allergies kept me from taste-testing these: I'm allergic to dairy, but for some reason have been able to eat eggs and butter, but cream cheese is still a no-no.

So I really had no idea what I was doing, but that was part of the fun. The blondie dough (the cakey part) for some reason came out too dry so it was difficult to work with. I was supposed to smooth the blondie dough in the baking pan and then swirl dollops of it with dollops of the cream cheese batter. Uhmmmm....ok.

As I mentioned, the dough was too dry, and the cream cheese batter was too wet. The cream cheese I was using was different than what you'd imagine - it's a straight from the farm cream cheese, not packaged Philadelphia stuff, so the consistency was a lot thinner, almost like yogurt.

Needless to say, this was quite a mess. This is what it looked like before baking:

YUM! I was pretty discouraged at this point, but I kept my faith. I know that baked goods go into the oven and come out a completely different creature, so I was hoping the baking process would make some sense out of the mess. I had also had a little taste of the blondie dough and it tasted really good, so I was hoping the cream cheese part also tasted good, and I knew at this point I had nothing to lose.

It took a lot longer to bake than it should have, probably cos the gooey cream cheese part was so....gooey. And so the outer edges started burning a little by the time the center was completely baked. Sigh. I still had a little bit of hope.

Once it was completely cooled I chopped it into bars, cutting off the burnt edges, of course. And they looked a little weird, but not bad. Of course, I couldn't try one. They seem like they might be ok. The jury is still out. If and when someone eats one I will certainly let you know.

Snickerdoodles (Pg 82)

So let's talk about the sacrifices I am making for this project, and in general, for the love of baking. During the baking of my Sugar Cookie Cutouts I had a bit of an accident. I was keeping the cutouts in the freezer downstairs (the one upstairs wasn't big enough) and I was running up and down the stairs in a frenzied excitement over my beautiful Nativity Scene cookies. So I got to the bottom of the stairs and I somehow stepped on my foot backwards and twisted my foot and fell. It was pretty painful and started swelling and bruising immediately. And all I could manage to say was "I need to finish the cookies!!" Priorities.

It definitely has slowed down my baking but I won't let it stop me. In fact, we needed more flour (and sugar and butter) so I went to to grocery store with my Mother and I got one of those little carts that has the seat in front and you drive it around if you're in a condition where you can't walk. See:

Here I am in the baking aisle, of course. I had fun zipping around (at a whopping half a mile an hour) the store in this cart, but it was a very humbling experience. It was one of those moments where I realized how much I take for granted - like being able to walk. I'm thankful that I'm in good health and don't have to worry about these things for more than like, a week, in the unfortunate circumstance of an injury.

But I digress. After the grocery trip I was on a mission: The Snickerdoodle. My Mother had made some the previous day and unfortunately half of them got a little overbaked. I say it was unfortunate because, obviously, they can't be served to friends and family at holiday gatherings, so they just have to be eaten by me. So I ate them and I fell in love with the Snickerdoodle. What an amazing little cookie.

Of course, with losing about half of the batch, we didn't really have enough for the holidays, and I am planning on going to a holiday party on Saturday and I wanted to bring some cookies. So with my Mother's generous help, I made a double batch of Martha's Snickerdoodles. I pretty much sat at the kitchen table measuring ingredients and my Mom had to mix everything in the mixer on the counter. Then, once the dough was made it needed to be rolled into balls and rolled in cinammon sugar. Luckily this was something I could do while seated, with my still swollen foot resting on another chair. But it was quite a process and I used all of the cookie sheets we have and it seemed like I was never going to stop rolling cookie dough into balls.

So I worked through the pain of a swollen foot and managed to make 6 dozen of these cookies. It was well worth it. They're like a little piece of heaven. They're light and flaky and fluffy and sweet with a little cinammon bite. Yum. I am still not sure if I will make it to the party, because my foot is still not fully healed, so I might have an over-abundance of this little darlings. I'm afraid I might not make it to the party.

Grammy's Chocolate Cookies (Pg 75)

I don't know about your Grammy, but my Grammy never made cookies like this! I made another oopsy on this one, but this was a good oopsy. This is what happens when I'm left home alone with my Mom's pantry. I really have no idea what's in it or how to find anything. It should be simple, I know, but I'm a bit challenged, I guess. So I was making these gorgeous giant chocolate cookies and I needed chocolate...no problem. I found this dark cocoa powder. Now, when I say dark, I don't mean an ordinary dark brown like you'd imagine from a dark cocoa powder. This stuff is black as night. Beautiful, fine, chocolatey, dark dark dark cocoa powder. Well I remembered using it when making a chocolate cake or cupcakes and I remembered it being quite nice and rich. So I used it in my chocolate cookies. The detail that I forgot was that when I used it in cake I mixed it with regular cocoa powder - probably only 1/3 of the black stuff to 2/3 regular. And of course, with the cookies, I used 100% black cocoa. My mistake, as my Mom pointed out. It is supposed to be mixed, just so it adds a nice richness. On its own....well it's a cookie of a different color, so to speak.

After the dough is refrigerated, it's rolled into balls and rolled in sugar before baking. So once they were baked they were black as night with a really subtle pretty sparkle from the sugar. They came out big and round and thin, but they had a nice cakey texture. They were, of course, very chocolatey. Sinfully chocolately, but oh so rich and oh so good. This recipe will also be re-visited and made with the proper chocolate, just for the sake of comparison.

Sugar Cookie Cutouts (Pg 241)

Ahhh, the classic sugar cookie cutout. So simple, so tasty, so perfect. Of course, they really are anything but simple. Anyone who's ever made rollout cookies can tell you what a pain it is. The flour is flying everywhere, your hands are sticky, the counter is never big enough, the cookie cutters aren't sharp enough and the dough breaks constantly and you can't transfer the cookie onto the baking sheet without it breaking....on and on and that's just before they're baked. Once they're baked, you have to decorate them! Especially if you choose some fancy cookie cutters that are shaped like Santa Clause or the Three Wise Men. Because if you don't decorate them, they are just unidentifiable lumps. Is it a man, an animal, or a European country? Who knows? You need at least 3 different colors of royal icing and a very steady hand and you need to decorate those cookies.

Of course, it is just this kind of challenge that gets me all excited and ready to bake. So this year, for Christmas, I decided to finally put to use the Nativity Scene cookie cutters my mom had purchased....I dunno, 10 years ago? We had been afraid, very afraid, but I knew I was ready to face the fear. So I made my sugar cookie batter, refrigerated it overnight, and got to work rolling out cookies. And cutting them into the shapes of Mary and Joseph kneeling in prayer by the manger, a baby lamb, the giant star, the trumpeting angel, and of course the tiny baby Jesus in the manger. Oh Holy Night.....in sugar cookies. As of the writing, the cookies are not decorated. They are still unidentifiable lumps. Pictures will be coming.

Chewy Molasses Crinkles (Pg 83)

This one was a failure on my part. Or what I should say is, it was a learning experience. I used margarine instead of butter. Why? It's a long story, not worth getting into. But here's what I learned: using margarine instead of butter doesn't work in chewy cookie recipes. It works when it's a rollout cookie that has more flour, but in the case of a chewy cookie the margarine is not dense or sticky enough. The dough was wet. Quite wet. It was pretty disgusting to work with, but I powered through and got them all onto the baking sheet and baked them. They were supposed to come out thick and chewy and soft. They came out very thin, almost like a wafer, and almost crunchy, but still kind of chewy. I know that makes no sense, but if you ate one you'd understand.

But the taste....oh, the taste. Out of this world. This cookie recipe will be re-visited and made with good wholesome butter, but I would even do it again and make them with margarine and deal with the mess and ugliness because this is one darn tasty cookie. Perfect blend of sweet and spicy and just.....yes. As Rachel Zoe would say, I die. I would show you a picture of this cookie, even though it came out ugly, but it's too late because I ate them all. Within about a day. They were good.

Gingerbread Snowflakes (Pg 259)

The one that started the project. After all, it's Christmas time, I must make gingerbread cookies. And how could I not be inspired by Martha's beautiful gingerbread snowflake? I went in another direction, though. Or directions, I should say. I went in the direction of small gingrbread boys, larger gingerbread boys, gingerbread girls, small stars, small snowflakes, Christmas trees....I didn't realize how many fun cookie cutters my Mother had been hiding.

These came out pretty good. They came out a bit crunchy, but that was either because I rolled them out too thin, baked them too long, or had the oven too high. Or all of the above. Something to work on. However, they do taste delicious, and that's really all that matters. I actually substituted nutmeg for cloves and it gave it a nice spicier flavor. So very Christmas-y.