Marbled Cookie Icing Might Sound Complicated To Make, But It's Actually So Simple

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A batch of tasty cookies can truly brighten the day, even more so when you've taken care to decorate them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Making an easy royal icing recipe requires only the three ingredients of meringue powder, water, and confectioner's sugar, but using it properly takes a bit of technique. Much like using a toothpick will prevent bubbles in your cookie's icing, so too will it help give your cookie decoration a beautiful marbled texture.

Understanding the difference between royal icing and its thinner counterpart, flood icing, will allow you to utilize both to achieve the perfect marble icing finish. Having a couple of colors of thinner flood icing is necessary to mix for a pattern that looks as good as it tastes.

Start by piping a royal icing outline on your sugar cookies to prevent spillage and then filling that in with flood icing. From there, it's a matter of adding a contrasting color of flood icing and using a toothpick to create a swirled pattern. You can start with a few drops or some simple squiggle lines to set the stage for you to run your toothpick through and form the marble look. This might take a few tries, but the benefit is, any cookies that don't come out looking exactly as you want them will nonetheless taste delicious.

One of the advantages of royal icing is that it can be used for more than just sugar cookies. Whether you're making a spicy gingerbread, delicate shortbread, or any other cookies, using your favorite cookie and icing recipes will make a batch of incredible sweets. With the clever addition of food-safe coloring and flavor extracts like ERCorArt's Food Flavoring Oils, you can take your royal icing to the next level.

Choose complementary flavors like cinnamon icing and gingerbread cookies, or lemon icing with shortbread for a delightful dessert. As long as you employ the proper technique for using your royal and flood icing, you can create a fantastic-looking marble-iced cookie.

Consider getting creative by mixing up both colors and flavors to enhance the marbled effect. For example, try mixing lemon flavor into a yellow-tinted icing and raspberry flavor into a pink icing and swirling it atop a sugar or shortbread cookie to make a marbled raspberry lemonade-inspired treat. With icing of the right consistency and a batch of clean toothpicks in hand, you can effortlessly decorate your cookies for the perfect gift, party platter, or indulgent dessert.