You will be amazed just how easy it is to make the glossy icing you see on bakery sugar cookies. These cookies are available for countless celebrations, Christmas, New Years even Easter -- a cookie for all occasions. The issue I have is these cookies come with a hefty price tag, ranging from a mere dollar to ten dollars. With this simple recipe you will be putting a great glossy coat of icing on your favorite cookie in no time, just like a pro.

This recipe contains just a few ingredients -- you probably already have most of them in your pantry. Confectioner's sugar, corn syrup, almond extract, milk and food coloring are the ingredients for a bakery style icing. Creating your own icing will allow you to control exactly what your family is eating -- I am not a big fan of eating products I cannot pronounce, or consuming items that have a longer sell-by date than snow tires. I do not want to get into the corn syrup debate, I myself substitute honey for any thing that calls for corn syrup.

Glossy Bakery Style Icing

Yields enough for 1 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 cup confectioner's sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup or 2 teaspoons of honey
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
assorted food coloring of your choice

Directions

In a small bowl, stir together confectioner's sugar and milk until the mixture is free of lumps. Blend in corn syrup/honey and almond extract, keep blending until the icing is smooth and glossy. Using a fork to mix the icing will allow better control of blending the mixture. When I hold the fork up I can tell if the mixture has reached my desired consistency, it should coat the tines of the fork evenly, if the icing is too thick you can add more corn syrup, if the icing is too thin add some more confectioners sugar. Divide your icing into separate bowls and add food colorings to reach the colors you desire. Add your food colors a drop at a time, as some colors may become a lot more vibrant than what you want.

Decorating

You can dip the cookies in the icing -- pipe them with a pastry bag fitted with an icing tip or paint them with a fresh clean brush, this should be a food safe brush, put aside just for your baking. For piping the cookies fill a pastry bag with the icing mixture, make sure the pastry bag is fitted with an icing tip that flows smoothly. Trace around the top of the cookies coloring book style, this will allow you to create lines. When those lines dry you can fill them in with the colored icings, this technique is called flooding, the icing may need to be thinned down a little. Be creative and have fun, I am sure you will enjoy the results.