Cookies... help please!

[Liverbird77]

Could you please share your simple icing recipes and methods for Christmas cookies?
I'd love to make the Christmas trees/snowmen/stars etc. I have the cookie cutters. I am fine with the actual cookies but I have no idea how to make the icing. Google has revealed lots of complex methods, I need it simple!

What sort of icing are you wanting to do?
I'd suggest buying some ready made Royal Icing (in tubs) from the baking aisle. You can water it down to make it thinner/runny & then hardens very solid.
I used it to make marbled icing on DD dinosaur cookies for her birthday.

I want to do traditional Christmas cookies.
I bought some piping bags last year, but never got round to having a go at them. Yours look really good!

Make royal icing, icing sugar and egg white with. Bit of lemon juice. Add whatever colours. An unofficial way of checking the thickness, scoop up a spoonful of icing and drop it back into the bowl. If it takes less than 5 seconds to drop it’s too runny, if it takes more than 10 it’s too thick.
Put a piping bag in a glass and fold over the edge. Put icing into bag and then seal the end with a rubber band.
Pipe the edge of your design first, wait for it to dry.
Make a slightly runnier icing and use it to flood the outline.
Practice on rich tea biscuits first!

I make Royal icing on my mixer. 2lbs icing sugar, 5 egg whites and half a tsp of cream of tartar. Then whisk it until it goes white and stiff... Need electric mixer really, takes 3-4 minutes or so. This makes a good batch.

I then split into into however many colours I want and colour the icing. I quite like doing baubles . Then I make little piping bags with greaseproof but you can use nozzles or just clip the points off of bought piping bags. Then I pipe the edges to any patterns I want on my biscuits. Then I leave the outlines to harden. I then add water to each of the colours to get to a consistency where if you put a blob on the surface it disappears in a few seconds. I then use the end of a kebab stick to spread this icing in between the outlines (this technique is called flooding). I leave them to dry and voila!

They aren't like the ones on Pinterest but they look ok! I watched you tube videos by a lady called Julie m usher to learn the techniques!

Sorry cross posted! Took me a while to type!

The Biscuiteers book on how to ice biscuits is very good.

Thanks for your replies. I don't have a mixer, so perhaps I should get one. You all sound extremely competent...I think I probably need to watch it being done. Thanks for the advice and wish me luck!

Good luck! I feel into a rabbit hole watching you tube videos one year! It's great fun, but they never seem to turn out quite as well as they are in my head. Here are my Halloween biscuits!

@NemoRocksMyWorld wow! They honestly look amazing!!
Question: I watched a video on the piping and then flooding. After you've done the flooding, do you use separate icing for the detail e.g. the black eyes and mouths on your pumpkins? I read you've to make the icing runny for the flooding, but it would need need to be less runny for the details, surely?

Great thread, thanks OP.

I determined to make Christmas cookies this year.

So I piped the details then flooded round them, but can do it the other way too. You would just need to take some of the stiffer icing out before you water it down to flood. There's usually loads of the stuff.

After waiting for the flooded icing to dry you can then pipe details on top, and you’re right, you do need the stiffer icing for that. I also repipe the outline to make it neat. I tend to use different colours for outline and filling, so I pipe the outline, put the bag to one side, flood ice in a different colour and then use the original bag for the details.

Another thing to try is to pipe the details before the main icing is dry. It means that they flow together slightly and can give a really pretty effect. Especially good for butterflies!

Thanks again, everyone.
I bought some tartar today, and red, green and yellow colouring.
I just need more piping bags now