I've always followed Helen's tutorial pretty well and let my flooded cookies dry overnight before decorating them. She recommends 12-18 hours. I might be crunched for time this week-end. What is the least amount of drying time that anyone has used successfully? TIA

I my self have wondered about this very thing. Hopefully you get an answer. Bump

I am not a cookie pro but I have flooded my cookies and placed them in a slightly warm oven with door open for a few hours and they were fine try a couple and see if it works for you

What icing are you using? RI? I'll be honest, I am SUPER impatient and usually only wait about an hour or two. The base won't be completely dry at this point, but dry enough so that the accents wont sink in. You can kind of see a "crust" has formed. I am carefull to not make my base too thick, otherwise the weight of the accents can displace the icing. Also, you have to be very carefull that your tip doesn't come in contact with the icing or it will dent it. Hopefully that helps.

Thank you! I'll probably be able to allow about 4-6 hours in between. Hope it works. Megamere, I looked at your photos - your cookies are awesome!

I use thinned royal icing and the flooding method, they need to sit overnight to be totally hardened up. They are dry to the touch within an hour or so, but you can still dent it in if you aren't careful. I also read from another CC member just recently about the oven trick that cakenutz uses. Apparently it works!!! I will have to try next time around!

I do the base layer of thinned RI and let it dry in the oven, with just the light on for a few hours, and then carefully pipe the decorations. I did that today with about 120 bride/groom heart cookies. I did the base layer on all of the cookies, put them in the oven with the light on, and then went out to dinner and a play. When I got home, I piped the details on the groom cookies and luster-dusted the brides.

The grooms were fine, but I did dent one bride when I tried to remove a brush bristle that had come off the brush.

Ideally, I like to wait at least 10-12 hours.

RedPanda

If I have time overnight I put the cookies in the food dehydrator. Works like a charm!

I think I am new to allot of the lingo, I usually just do things by accident and it works well...LOL. Can someone explain the flodding method to me? Sorry, my brain stopped working properly around...Friday afternoon...hahahaha. Thanks.

There are two ways of flooding:

1. Use a fairly stiff royal icing (RI) to outline the cookies. Then, using thinned RI, fill in the areas between the outlines. If you use a contracting outline, you can get a nice effect, even without further decoration.

2. Using thinned RI, outline and fill in the areas between the outlines. Usually, you will use the same color(s) to outline and flood.

Flooding refers to the filling of the areas on the cookie. The RI is thin enough to flow out and self-level itself, becoming a smooth surface.

Somebody else may have a better explanation, but what I do when I flood is fill in the outlined area from the edges inward. Once the cookie is fully flooded, I set it aside to dry, but I keep an eye on it for a little while. If air bubbles rise to near the surface, I pop them with a thin pin, and then carefully nudge the RI back to smooth where the bubble was. If this is done before the RI crusts, the surface will remain smooth.

RedPanda

You can also use color flow to flow in. I believe it makes it a little shinier.

I have read somewhere in this forum that if you add a small amount of cron syrup to the RI it adhere better to the cookie and help prevent the icing from shattering when bitten into. Have any of you used this technique with success?

The attached picture has just the 112 cookies that were good enough to give to the bride-to-be. (She had asked for 100, and I wanted to make extras to allow for breakage, goofy ones, etc.) There is actually room for more cookies on the cookie sheets.

RedPanda