I made a batch of Antonia74's royal icing and while it was a breeze to make & work with, it dried extremely hard and when I started packaging the cookies, I noticed the icing was starting to break a little bit. Has anyone else experienced this? What did I do wrong?

Royal icing is supposed to dry really hard. Don't know why it woul be braking off your cookie unless you had some give or dropped them.

It doesn't dry rock hard. The butter content in the cookies will keep it from doing that. That's why I recommend using the No-Fail with pure unsalted butter.

It definitely shouldn't chip off at all. Were you only outlining? How long did you let them dry before you tried to package them?

Helen - I used it on some ginger bread. There was only outlining and buttons & eyes/mouth done. They had dried about 14 hrs before I started packaging them. Should I have just let them dry a little longer? This was back during Christmas, I've just been forgetting to ask TIA!

Jennifer

JennT - I had that happen to my school bus cookies. When you took a bite of the cookie, the detailing cracked off. I tried a different sugar cookie recipe but it did have butter in the recipe. I stick with Toba's glace icing now.

kos

Thanks KOS - Does Toba's Glace icing stand up to packaging? That's the only reason I haven't tried it yet - becuase I wasn't sure about that aspect of it. And is it as easy to work with as royal? I am starting my valentine cookies this week (but not icing until the 12th) and some will be on sticks for boquets while the others will be in small baskets...I'll be wrapping all of them. Will it be ok once the cookies are packaged and stacked?

Toba's icing works well and I think it tastes the best. However, I find the length of time it takes to dry a negative. Those defiantely have to sit overnight before you add onto them, but royal will be set enough after a few hours.

Of course, all of them take a long time to dry enough to package.

I tried once trying to combine the two components of the icing....adding some corn syrup to the royal fill...what a MESS!

I did notice that Helen's recipe chipped way less..I forgot to secure my tripod and the camera came crashing down on a bouquet.. .not a chip!

Julia

Toba's do stack well. I don't have the problem with having to wait too long to do detailing with Toba's icing. I flood the cookie and wait about 30 minutes to an hour before adding any detail. I like the taste better too.

kos

Question about drying time.

When letting your flooding icing dry how do you wrap your cookies so that they don't get hard? I guess I am not letting my flooding icing dry long enough and trying to package to quickly.

When you are only outlining a cookie, you must thin the royal icing even more so that it really has a good "cling" to the cookie's surface. It will not chip off that way.

Oh, Ok....I've got it now, Helen! Not sure why I didn't get that before, but now I understand. lol Thanks so much for letting me know

cling to your cookies? huh? Geesh Helen, that's a "lightbulb" moment for me! I know when I did the detailing with the royal icing, the consistency was very firm.

Myself, I have a bunch of tupperware, rubbermaid, you-name-it, containers. I lay the cookies, single-layer, in the containers and seal them up until the icing sets. This works for me. I also bought a huge (under the bed) storage container and that works for when I have a lot of cookies. I only do cookies for family and friends so I'm not sure how someone like Antonia74 (Helen) does it. Hope that helps!

kos

I have a two baker's racks with zippered covers. They hold about 300 cookies, thank the Lord!

The cookies themsleves won't get harder within the drying time (2 days)...the No-Fail Cookie recipe should be like hard shortbread when you bake them anyway, or the icing won't dry because there is TOO much moisture in the cookies still. Gingerbread are usually even crisper, which is why they tend to be easiest to ship.