Valentine's Cookies

It's always fun to make a batch of Valentine's Day cookies! This year, I decided to up my game and try a new frosting. Until now, I have always frosted my cookies with a plain icing of powdered sugar, water, lemon extract and food coloring. But I have been reading quite a lot about Royal Icing and decided to make it instead. I know I am always showing you the cool things I do and make, but, since I am no Spring Chicken, there are very few things that I do where I can take you along on the journey from New Idea to Using New Idea to Discovering what I Do Not Like About the New Idea to Perfecting the New Idea...

Royal Icing

3 Egg Whites at room temperature, beaten until frothy

One 16 ounce bag of Powdered Sugar

Red Food Color & Vanilla Extract

Slowly incorporate the powdered sugar into the egg whites. Add a little vanilla and mix well. Working quickly (this frosting dries out FAST) spoon about 1/3 of the white frosting into a pastry bag, tube or baggie. Then add enough red food coloring to the remaining frosting to make it a sort pink. Spoon half of this mixture into another pastry bag, tube, or baggie. Now add lots more red food coloring to get the dark color you want and put this into a final pastry bag, tube, or baggie.

What I liked about this frosting:

1. It was really easy to attach the different kinds of sprinkles I used to decorate with.

2. The frosting dried quickly and made it nice and easy to pack the cookies for traveling.

What I didn't like about this frosting:

1. Following the recipe, the frosting is very thick and difficult to apply with a pastry nozzle. This caused the nozzle to plug easily and the frosting to clump. The recipe did not give an option for thinning the frosting down; I wasn't sure if adding water would ruin or change

2. The frosting did not smooth out when spread, like icing does. It stayed kind of texture-y.

3. I found I was a little uncomfortable with using the raw egg, even though all the Royal Frosting recipes I found called for it. I think that in the end, I will just start a week before (like I always have), use regular icing, and give the cookies enough time to dry well before shipping.