Experimenting with Royal Icing and Sugar Cookies

I'm not a huge fan of sugar cookies. To tell the truth, they are pretty bland. The only thing that redeems them in my book is the fact that they are a blank canvas. There is some amazing sugar cookie art out there, and I wanted to try my hand at it.

I've tried decorating sugar cookies before but never after I learned about the technique of flooding. That was the look I was going for but never could achieve. Until now.

So this was my first time flooding cookies, and I think it turned out pretty well. The flooding was pretty easy to do, and I had fun doing it. But I quickly realized that I need more couplers and more small plain tips. I never knew why I would need more than one tip of a certain size until now. I get it now. Now I want to buy some tips, but I have no idea if I can even get them in Libya. Hmm...maybe I see a package in the horizon...

I used the tutorial found here to help me through my first time flooding, and I found it super helpful. She gives some advice that's a little different than I've seen elsewhere, particularly with the consistency, and I found it to be most practical.

So the decorating was fun, but I was not really in love with the taste. I used Dorie Greenspan's sugar cookie recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours, and it was okay. I prefer this other recipe I have used before that used cream cheese in the dough. I think it makes for a softer cookie. I also wish I hadn't rolled them so thin. The ratio of icing to cookie was about half, and I think I would have liked it to be just a little more cookie. And the icing was just royal icing. Maybe there is a more flavorful recipe out there, even though I tried to liven mine up with some almond extract.

So I've got a lot of learning to do in this field, but I really want to get it. I want to make cookies that are pretty to look at and pretty darn good in your mouth, too. On goes the search!