Heart Sugar Cookies

So, I’ve never attempted to do royal icing on cut-out cookies before. I’ve been making these sugar cookies since I was in middle school, but I’ve always slathered them with homemade buttercream. Though I still believe that buttercream is a far superior topping as far as taste is concerned, I can’t deny that royal icing has it beat in aesthetics.

So, armed with Cookie Craft and an almost unnatural love of Valentine’s Day, I set out to make these heart-shaped cookies.

I used a sugar cookie recipe that I wrote down as a kid, which is now pretty badly beat up and barely legible, but is still my favorite.

1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Sift together dry ingredients, then add to wet a little at a time. Chill dough for 1 hour or until firm. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness and cut out desired shapes. Bake at 350 degrees for 7-9 minutes.

A few notes on this project;

* I’ve read that royal icing can be a bit tricky, yielding various results from the same recipe, and that usually a bit of eyeballing is in order to get the right consistency for the flood icing. Unfortunately, as this was my first time, I didn’t know what the right consistency was… as evidenced by the little points and peaks in my icing.

* Even if you’ve bought a cake decorating kit, you’ll likely need to buy multiples of certain tips, especially ones used for writing and borders. Of course, I’ve known this for quite awhile, as I go through around ten each of #5, #10, and #22 each day at work, but I still haven’t got around to stocking my own kit with these must-haves. As a result, each of the colors were piped with a different size of tip.

* For a good primer on royal icing decorating, go check out Sweetopia’s tutorial, as well as the trouble-shooting guide, which I’ve already stored in my memory banks for my next cookie-making attempt. (Target date; Easter.)