Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing...My First Attempt!!

First off, I finally decided to take action on my blog. I hated the layout I had. There are too many beautiful things that I love, and I only want to manage one blog, so I took away the fancy background and pictures. I designed my own header, added a blank background and presto!! I can see clearly now...it seems so much brighter & organized, and much easier to read, I hope. Anyway, on to the cookies. 

I have an oatmeal raisin and a chocolate chip cookie recipe, and I have perfected them both to my own tastes. But I have never tweaked a sugar cookie recipe to my liking, until now. After reading several cookie blogs, I found my favorite one, took some notes and got to work. I know you're probably saying, what's the big deal, it's just a sugar cookie. But not to me. I wanted to learn how to decorate them all cute and fancy like you see in specialty shops. My local bakery sells one cookie for around $3.95 and up! So I said no way, I can do this myself. And thanks to Sweet Sugar Belle I can make my own! They're not the best you've ever seen, but they're mine, and I was so excited at how they turned out!

 

I think I may have rolled the dough a little too thin but they turned out great anyway. I worked the recipe a little bit because I like sugar cookies that taste sort of like tea-cakes. And sugar cookies are fairly simple, so I knew this part would be easy, but now on to the icing.

 

Very stiff and stable, just like it should be at this point. From this batch I made icing for piping and my flood icing. And it was fairly simple to do. I decided I would pipe the hearts in pink and fill them with white icing, just because. Well...here's my first attempt at outlining cookies...

 

To be honest, I think I did okay. I had lots of broken lines, but I think I either had too much air in my piping bag that I didn't squeeze out or my frosting was too thick. And I was a little nervous so I was shaking, don't know why, so I kept touching my cookie with the tip of my icing bag, instead of staying well above the surface of the cookie, which is what you should do to achieve a nice even line. I will have to practice this more. Now on to filling the cookies with the white icing...

 

I picked this photo purposely to show the air bubbles that dried in my frosting. I did not pop all the bubbles as I filled in my cookies, I guess I was too excited about actually having made them at all!

 

I really think that I should have used a larger tip to outline my cookies. It looks weird to me.  Maybe I just need to practice a little more. I printed some practice sheets from  Karen's Cookies to help improve my skills. So what do all of you professionals think? Did I do good for my first go at it? Let me know what I can do to improve. Overall, I had a blast doing this. I see lots of cookie Saturdays in my future. Thanks for reading!