Gingerbread Men Sugar Cookies (Royal Icing)

Merry Christmas, hope you all had an amazing time with your family. 

I had to share one last cookie I made. I saw this  fun design on Gisela on Instagram. I have done gingerbread men before but this was a fun way to make using royal icing. I made these cookies for my dance fitness instructors.

 

What you need:

Baked Cookies (My favorite Sugar Cookie Recipe)

Brown, Red and White Royal Icing (see my favorite recipe below)

Brown and Red AmeriColor Gel Food Coloring to tint Royal Icing
Gingerbread Man Cookie Cutter (Bought on Amazon)

I used the dipping method with my royal icing. I started to do the dipping method about several months ago to speed up my decorating time. You can pipe each cookie which is a little cleaner but I find the dipping method to be the best. You get your royal icing to the outline consistency and put into a pie dish (I find this is not too deep, so you don't looses your cookie). Once you dip the top of the cookie you tap off the extra icing and then you let dry!
 

Once the brown was dry I added the details. I took a piping bag with white icing and added the details on his legs, arms and face. I then took a piping bag with red icing to make the buttons.

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INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened 2 cups white sugar 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1.	In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3.	Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Julie Usher, she has a GREAT YouTube video on how to make, color and make consistency adjustments. 

Royal Icing what you need:

2 lbs Powdered Sugar

1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

5 Large Egg Whites (or equivalent) 

Flavor to Taste

Gel Icing Color

Mix powder sugar and cream of tartar in your mixer, just to make sure it is incorporated in. Slowly add egg whites, then whip start of slow then go to very high speed. She says around 2 minutes, my friend had an older mixer so it took almost 10 minutes. You want stiff peaks that hold on and won't fall off the spoon. Add in your flavor, I would suggest you use a clear flavoring.  This would be the glue texture great for ginger bread houses etc.

Take 1 cup of royal icing in a smaller bowl then add your coloring, lightly mix so you don't get air into the the icing. I'm like her and like the gel coloring. 

For Top Coating - Add 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 tsp Water (This is if you don't want to outline and flood)

For Outlining - Add 1/2 to 3/4 tsp Water

For Flooding  - Add 2 to 3 tsp Water

WATCH her video on How to Top-Coat, Outline, and Flood Cookies. YES it is around 7 minutes BUT if you have never done this technique it's a MUST she explains it perfectly.

Snowman Gingerbread Men

Next on the list to do was a Christmas gift for my best friend. I did the upside down Gingerbread Men as Reindeer's so why not make them into Snowmen! I wanted to do some fun snowman cookies and came across Snowman Gingerbread Men on Created by Diane. NOW technically these are just shaped like gingerbread men, I used a sugar cookie base that is my besties favorite. I took her idea and went with it! I'm still working on my royal icing skills and my black that I used at first for the eyes and mouth was not thick enough and ran all together. Let's just say I had to wipe it off and re-pipe on the white and then do the eyes and mouth all over again!

What you Need:

Gingerbread baked Sugar Cookies

Royal Icing - White

Royal Icing - Black

Royal Icing - Orange

Royal Icing - Red

I wanted to do the gingerbread shape instead of the traditional snowman shape. After my gingerbread man have cooled. I started on the Royal Icing. I've been using Julia M. Usher's Recipe for royal icing, she has the best video's also to help you! I've included the recipe at the bottom of this post also. I color mine with Gel Food Coloring.

I first outlined the gingerbread men in white royal icing (not adding any color), I then flooding technique to fill in the snowman. Let the white dry and harden before doing the rest of the decorating. I found that when I was doing the eyes and mouth my royal icing was too thin and then it all merged together. You need it to be the consistency of the top coat. Do the eyes and mouth and let it set to harden. Then add a dot or if you can make a triangle for the nose in orange royal icing. I then added a little red scarf to make him look complete (and to help hide the line I had after I had to re-ice the heads). 

Thanks for Stopping by!

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For Royal Icing:

Royal Icing what you need:

2 lbs Powdered Sugar

1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

5 Large Egg Whites (or equivalent) 

Flavor to Taste

Gel Icing Color

Mix powder sugar and cream of tartar in your mixer, just to make sure it is incorporated in. Slowly add egg whites, then whip start of slow then go to very high speed. She says around 2 minutes, my friend had an older mixer so it took almost 10 minutes. You want stiff peaks that hold on and won't fall off the spoon. Add in your flavor, I would suggest you use a clear flavoring.  This would be the glue texture great for ginger bread houses etc.

Take 1 cup of royal icing in a smaller bowl then add your coloring, lightly mix so you don't get air into the the icing. I'm like her and like the gel coloring. 

For Top Coating - Add 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 tsp Water (This is if you don't want to outline and flood)

For Outlining - Add 1/2 to 3/4 tsp Water

For Flooding  - Add 2 to 3 tsp Water

WATCH her video on How to Top-Coat, Outline, and Flood Cookies. YES it is around 7 minutes BUT if you have never done this technique it's a MUST she explains it perfectly.