Hello Everyone!
Let’s continue with my attempts to whip frosting into shape. See what I did there?
I’ve been experimenting with icings for a month now. I’ll tell you, it’s been educational. First, while glaze is wonderful in flavor, it is pretty terrible at holding its shape. Nope, everything turns into a blob. My glaze drop flowers were just… no. It’s great for flooding (yup I learned a new term) and because it doesn’t dry so fast you can add other details that sink into the icing, but small details just won’t work out as planned.
Now, royal icing when thinned to the correct consistency (ahem… had a few fails there too) is great. It holds shape, dries hard, colors are bright, etc. Lovely. Except for the little matter of it tasting like chalk. Ugh, no. Frustrations abound! I will not put something that tastes like that onto my cookies, no matter how cute they look after. I let the hubby Brian taste it and he said “That’s pretty good.” … “Yeah? Wait for it.” … “Oh, ew yuck. Water please.” No. Not doing it.
So after some research I came across Sweet Hope Cookies’ “FrankenFrosting” which actually uses a tweaked version of Sugarbelle’s Royal Icing and Sweet Hope’s Glaze Icing. Basically, make both and mix them together. Done. Huzzah! Well, nearly. I found that mixing them equally wasn’t exactly what I wanted. It was more like taking a third of each and just swapping bowls. Still, what a find! And what’s more, there’s this whole community of cookie makers out there supporting each other and sharing ideas.
Anyway, FrankenFrosting seems to be the way to go to get the best of both glaze and royal icing. And for a newbie like me, that works just fine. The very first thing I did was to make those cute little drop flowers. Here is the result:
Okay okay, so my first bunch looked more like lopsided stars. But after a while I got the hang of it. Miss Evelyn (my 6 year old) was more than happy to eat up the mistakes after they dried. While waiting on those I next tried base coats with the glaze heavy frosting. I have to tell you I am very encouraged!
I feel that the flowers could have been a little smaller, and maybe with some leaves. I’ll try that next time.
I should have some more Valentine’s type cookies to show for next week. I’ve been practicing writing. Not my strong suit, fyi. Until then!
Love and cookies,
Sherry
Frosted Bear Bakery 