Monogram Cookies

I have two friends in Minneapolis who have birthdays right around now, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice my cookie-making skills.  I LOVE the monogram cookies Bridget makes at Bake at 350, and thought I'd give it a go.  Let's just say my results had ups and downs.  Since I am known for my optimism (haha), let's start with the successes!

I used both a different cookie recipe and a different royal icing recipe for this batch.  Both were from Annie's Eats.  You can find the cookie recipe here, and the icing recipe here.  You guys, they were DELICIOUS.  I made no changes to the cookie recipe, but for the icing I added a scant 1/2 cup of water instead of 5 Tablespoons, and I also added 1 tsp. vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp of lemon extract.  I think using less meringue powder really helps with the taste, and I have to say the lemon flavor with the sugar cookies was amazing.  Madcap J, Annie says to mix the icing on a low speed which worked out way better than what we did.  It looked more like icing and less like over-beaten whipped cream.  Also, I think my icing skills are improving, but they are certainly far from professional as you'll see in a minute.

Okay, now for the failures.  Well, I guess it was a singular failure, but it was a big one!  The icing dried in a funny way making the cookies tasty but unusable as gifts.  Even S., who is normally very unpicky said that they looked "strange."  Now, my first thought was that it was the icing recipe.  However, so many of the comments on Annie's page said that they got great results, I feel like that can't be the problem.  Also, I think the same thing happened with the batch that Madcap J and I baked together, just to a lesser extent.  So I suppose all I can do is try, try again.

Here are a couple pictures of the cookies:

I need a better camera, but the easiest spot to see the weird icing is the lower left part of the pink "A" cookie. It's discolored and just sort of squidgy looking. Here's one more picture:





You can see it a bit on the yellow "M" cookie as well.  Sigh. S. and I have been nibbling on these for days, which is why I'm taking them to a little gathering I'm going to tonight :) I'm also taking some lemon bars from Bakerella's site which I'll post on later.

One last thing on the monogram cookies: if you attempt them, know that the candy melts harden fast!  I started by doing about 6 monograms with the melted candy, and then tried to sprinkle them all with nonpareils.  That did not go well, as nonpareils went bouncing across my table not sticking to anything.  I ended up doing them one at at time (in a little bowl to prevent more nonpareils from escaping) which worked out much better.

Ah, adventures in novice baking :)

Madcap E.