Rollout Sugar Cookie & Royal Icing Recipes

Buckle up, folks! The Gray Duck Bakes official recipe guide is LIVE. Throw on your favorite vintage jam and keep scrolling for more details and stick around til the end for my best tips & tricks for success. #RecipeFirst

The Recipe Guide

After a year of refinement, research, and a ridiculous amount of experimentation, my rollout sugar cookie and royal icing recipes are ready! This guide breaks down each ingredient and the exact steps I use when creating my sugar cookies.

Note: I don’t provide a measurement of time because it varies depending on your comfort level and skill. Something that might take 15 minutes for a seasoned baker, could take an hour for someone getting started. Try these recipes on a day where you have some extra time to kill. The more you practice, the faster you’ll get.

Tips For Success

Rollout Sugar Cookies

1. Skip flouring surfaces and rollout your dough between two sheets of parchment paper instead. The extra flour can dry out your cookies.

2. Don’t skip the freezing step. Freezing your dough for ten minutes before baking will prevent spread and help your cookies bake more evenly. Just trust me.

3. Don’t crown the baking pan. Leave space between cookies to prevent spreading, about 2” between cookies should do.

4. Take them out when they are no longer shiny. Everyone’s oven is unique, so what takes 10 minutes in my oven might only take 8 in yours. Keep an eye on your cookies and when they no longer have a shine to them on the top, they’re done. They should be really light brown on the bottom.

5. You can freeze these cookies before you decorate. If you’re baking ahead of time, you can freeze cookies before decorating them. Place them in a ziploc bag and in an airtight container. Allow them to come up to room temperature before decorating.

Royal Icing

1. Use very warm water (borderline hot) to mix with your meringue powder. The warm water will help the meringue powder fully dissolve.

2. Be careful adding more water. If you add too much water, your icing will never reach a stiff peak and it will be more like a glaze.

3. Don’t use the whisk attachment. The whisk attachment will add excess air into your royal icing which can make it crumbly when it dries.

4. Stiff peaks mean stiff peaks. Check out the recording below to see how my icing looks when it’s almost ready. It should be bright white (unless you’ve used vanilla paste, then a nice off white color) and it should stay in position when you remove the paddle.

5. Only use gel food coloring for royal icing. Water-based icing will mess with the structural integrity of your icing so be sure you only use gel based colors. Learn more.

6. Royal icing storage: Once made and bagged, royal icing can stay on the counter for about a week or so. Personally, I don’t store it on the counter longer than that. Be sure to thoroughly mix before decorating if the bags have sat overnight.

7. You can freeze royal icing. You read that right, you can freeze royal icing in a container or in bags but be sure to thoroughly mix it before you start decorating. It may help to re-bag.

Royal icing reaches stiff peaks when it’s ready to go! This consistency is perfect for piping fine details like flowers, leaves, and letters. Carefully add water to this to achieve a flood consistency.

Well, there you have it

You’re ready to take on the world, one cookie at a time. Go forth and make cool shit. If you have trouble with these recipes, don’t hesitate to reach out for help.

I used these exact recipes to create my latest batch of cookies pictured below.

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