Lemon Royal Icing

Whenever I want decorate sugar cookies (using Royal Icing), I always use my Speckulatus Sugar Cookie recipe as the cookie base. This cookie recipe has grated lemon rind in it, and I always have leftover rindless lemons to try to find a use for.

Last year when I was decorating cookies, and had the leftover lemons sitting around, I wondered if I could use the juice in place of water in my Royal Icing. It turned out wonderful. Since the cookies already have a subtle lemon flavor, substituting lemon juice in the icing gives an extra punch of lemon.

Plus… generally, Royal Icing isn’t exactly the best tasting icing, so adding lemon juice really improves the flavor! I’ve found that 1 large lemon yields about 1/3 cup of lemon juice.

Cookies decorated with Royal Icing or Lemon Royal Icing…

Lemon Royal Icing

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Ingredients

  

• 2 pounds confectioners' sugar
• 6 Tablespoons Meringue Powder
• ⅔ cup Lemon juice (or water)

Instructions

 

• Sift the powdered sugar.
• Add all the ingredients to the bowl of a mixer, and beat using the paddle attachment until icing forms peaks (about 7 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer)
• When using this icing to decorate cookies, I generally add a few extra tablespoons of water so that it doesn't end up quite so stiff… I find that I don't generally need this frosting as stiff as this basic recipe makes it. I probably add about ¼ cup additional water (or lemon juice). I base how much water I add on how it looks. You want the icing to be stiff enough so that when you pipe details it will hold it's shape, but not so stiff that you can't get the icing out of the bottles/piping bags easily.