Iced Sugar Cookies

   

I made these over the summer, before I went to Oxford (in other words, back when I was barely posting.)  I'm posting them today because I will not be baking.  I'm sick...or more likely the lactose-free frozen yogurt at school is not made with lactaid-type milk as I'd thought but actually soy-based.  I'm soy intolerant (rather like many people are lactose intolerant) so eating soy makes me ill, rather like I have the flu.  Either way, it doesn't matter, I'm not in the mood to bake (and if it is the flu, I don't want to get people sick.)  Well this was certainly an appetizing discussion!

Anyway, I made these more to practice my icing technique than because I wanted to make sugar cookies.  The cookies were very good, don't get me wrong.  They were from Martha Stewart's Cookies and they were really nice, although a little finicky to work with.  The icing was just a basic powdered sugar and water royal icing.  I used a thin icing tip with the icing still somewhat thick to draw a circular outline on the cookies.  Then I thinned the icing and used a larger tip to pipe some onto the cookie (this is called flood work, I believe).  I used an offset spatula to spread it into a thin layer.  I shouldn't have had to do that, I don't think, but I'm pretty sure I didn't thin it enough because I was a little nervous about making it too runny.  Ah well, they still looked smooth and shiny, like they are meant to.  Plus, they still tasted delicious, so really who cares that the icing was slightly imperfect looking!