I’m a sucker for anything having to do with rainbows — because, duh, COLOR! Color that is so neatly organizing in a visually pleasing order. Swoon! Continuing on with my I-wish-I-were-in-Hawaii theme, Hawaii is full of rainbows. You will see at least one every day. I mean, the Hawaii license plate has a rainbow on it. So naturally I had to make rainbow cookies to continue with my tropical theme!
If you are a new to decorating with royal icing, here are some helpful tips and links:
- I used my grandma’s sugar cookie recipe, which is listed below. Another good cut-out cookie recipe can be found at Bridget’s wonderful Bake at 350.
- I used a royal icing recipe from Annie’s Eats, which is listed below.
Here are the specifics on how I made these cookies:
- I bought a rainbow cookie cutter on Amazon.
- You’ll need red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet food coloring. If you want to be super accurate, throw indigo into the mix as well. Because, you know, Roy G. Biv. I used Wilton gel colors.
- There is no outlining or flooding involved with these cookies. All I did was pipe lines of icing onto the cookies to make the rainbow. You’ll need a round pastry tip for this — I would stick with a medium-sized tip. Make sure that your royal icing isn’t too runny. You want icing that will hold its shape after piping.
- For some reason (likely due to white balancing issues with my camera), it looks like my rainbows are missing purple. It looks like I made two sweeps with blue icing. Weird!
Omi’s Sugar Cookies
Print Recipe
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon nutmeg
Beat butter and sugar. Add egg, sour cream, and nutmeg. Add dry ingredients gradually. Chill the batter overnight or for at least 4 hours. Roll out dough and cut with cookie cutters. Bake at 350F until golden (in true fashion, my grandma didn’t give a specific baking time. I baked the cookies for about 8 minutes). The yield will depend on the size of the cookies you make. I made a couple dozen rainbows.
White Royal Icing
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 Tablespoons meringue powder
5 Tablespoons water
Directions:
Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the sheen has disappeared and the icing has a matte appearance (about 7-10 minutes). Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl to an air-tight container. This will be the stiffest consistency of the icing, and at this point it is still too stiff to use for decorating. Add water a very small amount at a time and stir by hand until fully incorporated. Continue until the icing has reached a consistency appropriate for piping.
You will likely need to make two batches of this icing in order to have enough to make all the necessary colors for the rainbows.
Hope you enjoyed the pineapples, whales, and rainbows! Palm trees, octopi, and sunshines are comin’ up next.
Ahhhh… So nice to see something that reminds me of sun and warmth. 😎 Thanks so much for posting those, and I’m so sad you have to spend your spring break in Wisconsin!! Hope it warms up soon.