Paint Your Own Cookie
Follow this blog post to learn exactly how to make Paint Your Own Cookies. This blog post outlines exactly which recipe I use to make royal icing that actually tastes good, tips and tricks for making color dots that work, how to make sure the ink doesn’t bleed, how to keep the sugar cookie soft and more!
Ingredients
For the Sugar Cookies
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1 stick, room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 edible ink pen
For the Royal Icing
- 2 lbs powdered sugar
- 3 Tbsp meringue powder
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp butter emulsion
- 2/3 cup + 2 Tbsp water
- gel food coloring of choice
Instructions
For the Cookies
- In a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, place ½ cup of unsalted butter at room temperature and 1 cup of granulated sugar.
- Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 1-2 minutes).
- In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the 2 cups of all purpose flour, ½ cup of almond flour, 1 tsp of baking powder and ¼ tsp of salt until combined.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl of butter and sugar mixture and then add 1 egg, 1 tsp of vanilla extract and ¼ tsp of almond extract. Mix until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Do not overmix. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and bring it together by hand until it looks like a homogenous dough.
- Place the dough onto the parchment paper you will use to bake the cookies and roll out to ¼ inch thickness.
- Use your desired cookie cutter to cut out the cookie shapes keeping in mind to leave room for the placement of the royal icing color dots. Remove the excess dough from around the shapes.
- Combine the excess dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out again to ¼ inch thickness. Cut out the remaining shapes and place on the parchment paper.
- Once all cookies have been cut out and placed on the parchment paper, place the parchment paper onto the baking sheet that you will use to bake later on. Refrigerate the cookies for just 30 minutes or freeze for 10 minutes. Cookies should feel firm to the touch before placing in the oven.
- Towards the end of the 30 minutes of chill time, preheat the oven to 350℉ (roughly 180℃) Remove the cookies from the refrigerator and bake for 10 minutes.** Allow the cookies to cool completely.
For the Royal Icing
- Place 1, 2lb bag of powdered sugar and 3 tbsp of meringue powder into a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low until combined.
- Add 1 tbsp of vanilla extract and 2 tsp of butter emulsion or extract and continue to mix on low. Slowly pour in the ⅔ cup + 2 tbsp of water a bit at a time while continuing to mix. The mixture will be lumpy at first but will smooth out over time.
- Increase the speed to medium/high once all water has been incorporated and mix for about 30 more seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all ingredients are combined.
- Optionally, at this point add some white gel food coloring to reach your desired shade of white. Mix one more time then separate out into small mixing bowls, one for each color dot you will a make, about 1/4 cup of royal icing into each bowl. Cover the main white icing with plastic wrap or a damp towel and set aside.
- Color each bowl of icing to your desired shades for and place into piping bags. Cut off the tip of each bag and pipe small circles onto a piece of parchment paper. Allow these to dry overnight.
- Line each cookie with the white icing that you have placed into a piping bag. Reserve the thick icing for the following day. Thin out the remaining white icing 1 Tbsp of water at a time, until it is a smooth and runny consistency. Place this into a piping bag as well.
- Fill each cookie with the flood icing and allow to dry overnight.
For the Assembly
- The next day, once the cookies and color dots have dried, use the thick icing you reserved in the piping bag to pipe small dots to adhere the dried color dots onto each cookie.
- Use an edible ink pen to create a design on each cookie!
- Use as you please--for a party, to send as a gift, etc!