The EASIEST Way to Decorate Cookies with Royal Icing

Cutout sugar cookies, outlined and flooded with icing, are a sweet holiday tradition. Decorate cutout cookies the easy way with our quick recipe for lookalike royal icing (no eggs needed!). Plus, you'll love our simple trick for professional-looking cookies literally anyone can make. See how we do it!

Easy Royal Icing Tips

• To make THIN icing for flooding cookies: In small bowl, mix powdered sugar, vanilla and almond extract called for in recipe (below). Add enough milk until smooth and desired spreading consistency. 
• To make THICK icing for outlining cookies: Transfer 1/2 cup of the icing mixture to a bowl, and add more powdered sugar a tablespoon at a time until thick enough to pipe from a small plastic squeeze bottle or decorating bag. Icing should be thick enough to hold its shape (and not spread out) when you pipe a small line on a test cookie or piece of parchment paper.

This recipe yields 24 cookies. Want 3 dozen from a batch instead of 2 dozen? Go for it! Just be sure to make a these adjustments

• Make a larger batch of icing, doubling the amounts called for in the recipe below.
• Roll cookies thinner, to 1/8 of an inch, in order to get more cookies from the same amount of dough. This also gives cookies a cleaner edge and shape, but thinner cookies are more difficult to transfer to the cookie sheets, so handle with care, and be sure to reduce the bake time slightly.