Icing Sugar Cookies II

Never again.

Baking shouldn't leave you swearing, grumpy and snappy.

Remember the last time we made these? Well, Brad wanted to give them another try since they're is fave. My bestie R. even sent me meringue powder after my last post so we couldn't fail?!

The cookies themselves turned out fine. No bums this time - I guessed and put the cut out shapes in the fridge for 5 minutes before throwing them in the oven. Not that I get any hints or pointers from the book.

The icing is where things really went off the rails.

We made the icing according to the instructions. I even made parchment paper piping bags! Messy but way better than a spoon which is what we used before. So I'm piping the edges, no issues...

However filling in the edges with a brush (like she says to do) doesn't work.

Check out the outlining technique on the pink one - you can tell how frustrated we were.

There is a blurb in the recipe that says to 'add water until you get the right consistency if you want them satiny'. 

Ummmm.....how else would I want the icing? I want my cookies to look like the photo. How much water do I add? What is the consistency? We messed around with the yellow and pink icing with no water and it doesn't work. I can't imagine what you would use this icing for???

Then I decided to randomly add 1 teaspoon of water to the green icing and what do you know?! It worked.

This makes me really angry. If I'm going to go out and BUY a recipe book, I don't want the writer to hold back any secrets. I'm sure I could have found a great blog with a free recipe that included a description of the 'consistency' and the amount of water to add to the icing.

There is bourbon in my next batch of cookies thank God.

They are from a blog. They're going to be awesome.