I have a confession to make. I tried to save time on my Christmas cookies by using premade sugar cookie dough. They tasted good but they didn’t hold their shape and the royal icing wasn’t the right consistency.
Mistakes happen, sure. But I should have stuck with the recipe from scratch that I knew would work. There’s no time for experimentation on Christmas Eve!
Besides, I went to the trouble of buying little jars to put them in. It was going to be such a cute gift.
My sister’s gluten free chocolate chip cookies were also from a premade dough but those turned out great.
Then I made the mistake of putting bread in the jar to keep the cookies moist. After all that effort not to contaminate! 😦 At least my brother in law ate them. I think.
It really ate at me that I couldn’t replicate the success I had with my Morrocan cookies. I needed to redeem myself. I needed to know that wasn’t some kind of fluke. Most importantly, I needed to know how to make them from now on.
I used the same rolled cookie recipe from the Morrocan cookie post (from Make Bake Celebrate). Then I used Wilton’s royal icing mix to make the frosting. I still had to adjust it to get the right consistency and dye it.
Rolled Cookie Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 TSP baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 TSP vanilla extract
I don’t own a KitchenAid, so I just used a regular old hand mixer to make my batter. Detailed instructions and photos are here
Here’s some of the most important things I learned:
1. Let your egg and butter get to room temperature before making the batter. This really does matter.
2. Once the dough is made, put it in the fridge for 20 minutes before rolling it out.
3. Once you’ve cut out your shape, freeze your cookies for 2-5 minutes. This helps the cookie hold its shape. (Note: this doesn’t work with Pillsbury premade dough)
4. When using Wilton’s royal icing mix, add one tbsp of water at a time. It’s easy to add more water, hard to extract it. The consistency best for decorating with the condiment bottles is similar to Elmer’s glue. Thick but fluid.
5. Be patient. Cookie decorating is a multi-step process with lots of waiting in between.
Kerry Kitchen 