I only make cookies once a year during Christmas for fun and I use the Sally’s baking addiction sugar cookie and royal icing recipe but always have this issue. After baking, the surface of the cookie is kind of flaky and crumbly so then when I do flooding you can see what’s flaked off.
Does anyone have any advice for how to fix this? I’m not sure if it’s an issue with the recipe/my ingredients or how I’m making the dough.
Also, does anyone have tips for how to make white royal icing more white? Mine always dries to be a creamish color.
by bobgophop
4 Comments
Honestly, this looks to be more of an issue with icing structure than the cookie impacting the icing. Was the icing thoroughly mixed?
It’s two things. Don’t roll with flour. Instead roll between 2 sheets of parchment paper. Also make sure you are not over mixing when you make the dough or over rolling. The cookies I make from like my 3rd scrap dough batch are flakey because I’ve mixed the dough so many times by then.
When you originally make the dough, while mixing in the dry ingredients make sure you mix only until they are absorbed. Over mixing ruins cookies. I use the “stir” speed on my mixer and stop as soon as possible.
I’m not sure which icing recipe you are using but if you use vanilla it could be causing this color. You can either use no vanilla, clear vanilla, or add white gel color to get a true white.
To me, that looks like the splotchy icing that comes with high humidity. Do you have a hygrometer in your decorating area? Might be worth checking out. I run a dehumidifier in the cookie room, even in the winter, to prevent this.
I second the suggestion to roll between parchment, or you can try powdered sugar instead of flour–this is what I like to do for sugar cookies.
And for your white icing, I’d definitely recommend adding white gel food coloring. I adore the Chefmaster brand.
I had a similar issue once when I used low quality butter in my cookie recipe, it caused what is called “butter bleed” into the icing. For whatever reason the icing pulls the butter to the surface, possibly due to high water content butter. At least that’s what I was told by another baker anyway.