Cookie glaze

When I was a girl I used to wince when my mother dug out the Christmas cookie cutters. It was just a matter of hours until I’d be stuck with helping to decorate them. I hated it, sitting there with a butter knife and carefully coating them with creamy frostings tinted holiday colors that served as a backdrop for her silver and gold dragées, colored sugars and sprinkles. The mountain of cookies never seemed to diminish; she made twelve dozen of two recipes, one thin and one thick. Every year, I lost all patience at some point and would just dunk a cookie upside down into the frosting, prompting her to say, “Ella, do it right.”

I always hoped “Or don’t do it at all” would follow, but it never did. She was far too smart to put that option on the table.

That’s one reason I like glazing cookies. Plunking them into the glaze is a perfectly fine method. The glaze is also a good base coat for further decorating which, ironically, I now enjoy when I’m in the mood. Many cookies in the photo will be decorated further (which is why they are thinly coated) but the glaze, which tints well with gel coloring, can be left unadorned.

This is a basic glaze I’ve used for years. It’s similar to many other glazes — how many ways can we combine three ingredients, four if some flavoring is used? — and it’s foolproof. It dries to a beautiful, hard gloss and the thicker the coating, the shinier it will be. It’s a pourable consistency, so wet that if colored sugar is to be used, it should be sprinkled on after 10 – 15 minutes. If done immediately, the sugar will begin to dissolve.

It’s a good keeper in an airtight container, but will need to be re-stirred before using again. If your bowl’s too narrow to dip the cookies into the glaze, you can spread it with the back of a spoon, an offset spatula, a pastry brush or my old nemesis, a butter knife.

Cookie Glaze

1 cup / 4 oz powdered (icing) sugar, sifted – sift after measuring
1 TB water or milk (I use water)
2 tsp light corn syrup
1 or 2 drops almond extract (optional, will cut the sweetness)

Stir together until smooth and the consistency is thinner than syrup. If needed, add more water a drop or two at a time.

Dip a cookie into the glaze, letting excess fall back into the bowl. Give a twist of the wrist and move to a sheet of wax paper or to a cooling rack. This glaze needs about 3 hours to dry completely.

Makes enough for 1 – 2 dozen jumbo cookies or 3 – 4 dozen smaller ones.

Tagged as: Christmas, Hanukkah