Keetha's Classic Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

You may remember from your readings here that we promised the recipe of the sugar cookies we made and decorated to take to our friends who welcomed us into their tailgates with open arms. Some of you dear readers may remember seeing the recipe here, with a slight variation.

When your ready to bake your cookies, begin working with a small ball of dough at a time. Keep the rest of it in the fridge as it will be easier to work with when it's cold. Lightly flour your workspace and rolling pin. Roll out the dough slowly until it's about 1/4" thick. Keetha tells me that anything thicker and your cookies run the risk of not cooking all the way through. Dip your cookie cutter into flour, and cut away! Try to put the same size cookies together on the same baking sheet for the best results. Finally, bake the cookies at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

To decorate the cookies, we mixed up a batch of royal icing.

1 pound of confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons of meringue powder*
4-6 tablespoons of warm water
2 teaspoons of flavoring, if desired (we use vanilla, but you could use almond, lemon, butter, etc...)

*meringue powder can be found at cake decorating supply shops or heaven forbid, large discount stores!.


(Sorry about the photo, Blogger is being difficult!!! Just cock your head to the right and MAYBE you can get the picture!)

Start by sifting the confectioners' sugar into a mixing bowl. Add the meringue powder and mix thoroughly. Set your mixer on medium speed, and add the warm water 1 tablespoon at a time. Then add any flavorings that you may wish to use, and any more warm water to get the consistancy that you need. The icing should be fairly thick for outlining, but have somewhat of a thinner consistancy for large fill areas.

Start off with the outlining. This will create sort of a damn for the fill area, if you chose to do so. Keetha suggests using squeeze bottles (like those neat, old soda fountain ketchup & mustard bottles) to ice as they are a little easier to handle for those of us (and by that I mean ME!) that have trouble using a piping bag. The icing can be stored at room temperature for a pretty good while as long as the container is sealed very well.

Let your decorated cookies dry completely, and then you can wrap them in small celophane bags and tie with a nice colored ribbon. Something to this effect...


(This photo used courtesy of Write Kudzu...Thanks Kiddo!)

We had a great time in Starkville this past weekend, and already have plans set for this weeks game! Stay tuned in to the Kudzu Kitchen and Write Kudzu for updates about GAMEDAY! GO DAWGS!!

PS... These recipes and MUCH, MUCH more can be found in Keetha's books, Culinary Kudzu and More Culinary Kudzu. Go on over to Pecan Street Press and take a look!