Ingredients

• Sugar, butter and milk are the essential ingredients in sugar cookie icing. Adding shortening to the icing will prevent it from hardening. To make an icing that will slightly harden for stacking, use a butter-based icing recipe. Always use confectioners’ sugar as the sweetener. It gives the icing a thick consistency, because cornstarch is mixed with the finely ground sugar to prevent the sugar from caking. Granulated sugar will make icing grainy. Corn syrup gives the icing the elasticity it needs for piping it onto a cookie. When coloring or adding extract to the icing, add the coloring and extract before milk. If you add the coloring after you have mixed in the milk, the icing will be softer and you will need to add more confectioners' sugar to thicken the icing.