I had been curious about these iced cookies I have seen everywhere, so I decided to give it a try and since it'll be my first time, I chose to do the most easy and simple design of all -a happy face- I mostly wanted to give it a try at outlining and flooding the cookie with the icing. It is pretty hard and time consuming, very inexpensive but you do need a lot of patience. I baked these shortbread cookies in the morning (8:30), cooled them (9:45) and prepared the royal icing (10:30), outlined them(11:30), flooded -yellow icing- (2:00) them then I decorated them -eyes & mouth- (4:00). It was an all day thing!
I'm thinking they would be great for holidays, or b-days so I made enough for my kids to eat, but also enough so I could see how long they last fresh. I had to do a taste test so I had to eat 1 every day : ) and as I found out, they are good up to 1 week after you bake them, but I recommend you make them no longer than 3-4 days in advance.I also practiced monogramming, with my kids initials, of course...
and also with some basic shapes...
this poor cookie had a bad start since the beginning, the shape was not perfectly round and while icing it I did not notice the air bubbles, but it was equally delicious : )