what's cooking wednesday - royal icing

Further proof that the world truly is a small place the photographer at the wedding we recently attended was someone Mike and I had gone to highschool with a hundred years ago or so. We had the opportunity to chat and catch up a little bit over the course of the evening and it turns out she's got some mad baking skillz that put mine to shame. You know on top of being a kick ass photographer too. Lucky me, through the magic of facebook, I am able to message her eleventy billion times and ask -- how'd you do that?

Now I've been using an icing sugar/corn syrup/milk/lemon extract icing for my sugar cookies. It's lovely to look at, with it's glossy finish, but a bit of a pain to work with. There's not much control there. It's more of a "free flowing" icing. And there is an incredibly long set up time if you're going to bag them. They really need to dry overnight. My new baking guru suggested a give royal icing a try. So I did with my silent auction cookies.



3 tbsp merengue powder
4 cups icing sugar
6 tbsp water

Beat all ingredients together on low speed for 7 - 10 minutes until icing forms peaks.

Recipe Notes: These days they're making royal icing with merengue powder instead of raw egg white. You can pick it up at a craft store like Michael's. I liked how quick and easy it came together. Much easier than the other icing I use. The control is much better too. I made my flooding or fill in icing a little too watery, but that's an easy fix for next time. I was also very pleased with the drying time. They were baggable in a fraction of the time I am normally used to. The only other change I made was to do 2 tbsp of lemon extract and 4 tbsp of water. I like you to know you're eating a lemon sugar cookie. So I go a bit heavier on the extract in the cookie and in the icing. I am definitely happy for the tip!




What is What's Cooking Wednesday and how can I play?

What's cooking Wednesday was born out of a desire to get out of that what's for dinner rut. Playing is easy, on Wednesday post a recipe that has been tried and tested by you and then pop over here and add your name to the Mr. Linky. When entering your name also add the name of the recipe in brackets and make sure you link to your What's Cooking Wednesday post and not just your blog's front page. And don't forget to link back here, the home of What's Cooking Wednesday.

So for example I would write Shan (Speedy Chicken Stir Fry) in the name section. For the URL section I would post this: http://shanrev.blogspot.com/2007/10/whats-cooking-wednesday-speedy-chicken.html

I'll let you in on a little secret, my WCW recipes are almost never made on a Wednesday. So feel free to cook and photograph whenever you have time and join us posting on Wednesday