By Susan Spungen
- Total Time
- 1 hour, plus drying
- Rating
- 4(645)
- Notes
- Read community notes
This tribute to the artist Ellsworth Kelly’s work “Nine Colors,” requires just one decorating skill: mixing colors. Use gel food coloring for the best results, and blend the colors together gradually, using the tip of a toothpick to control their transformation. For muted tones, add a touch of brown, or a complementary color, like a drop of purple to bright orange. Try a mixing lighter color first. Then, once you’ve used it, make it darker. For example, sky blue can be deepened with the addition of royal blue, navy blue or a combination. Don’t feel tied to the colors produced in Kelly’s work, but rather, think of these as an experiment in color.
Featured in: 12 Stunning Cookies That Will Impress Everyone You Know
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Ingredients
Yield:2 dozen cookies
- 1(1-pound/455-gram) box confectioners’ sugar (3¾ cups), plus more if needed
- 3tablespoons light corn syrup
- 2teaspoons fresh lemon juice
- 3 to 4tablespoons warm water, plus more if needed
- Gel food coloring, preferably red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown and white
- 1recipe Basic Sugar Cookies, cut into 3-inch circles, baked and cooled
For the Glaze
For the Cookies and Decorating
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Preparation
Step
1
Prepare the glaze: Combine box of confectioners’ sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice and 3 tablespoons warm water in a medium bowl. Stir with a fork to combine well, slowly adding water as needed to achieve the desired consistency. You should have 2 cups total. Test the glaze on a cookie as you go: If it doesn’t spread out on its own to a smooth finish within 10 seconds, it is too thick and needs more water. If it runs off the edge of the cookie, it’s too thin and needs more confectioners’ sugar.
Step
2
Let glaze sit, tightly covered, until ready to use, stirring occasionally. The glaze will keep for at least a week in a small airtight container like a glass jar.
Step
3
Decorate the cookies: Pour about ⅓ cup glaze into a small, wide bowl. Starting with a light gel food coloring, mix in color until desired shade is reached. Holding a cookie by the edges, with the top-side down, dip into the glaze, moving the cookie around a bit to make sure it coats the whole surface. Gently shake the cookie from side to side to let the excess glaze drip off.
Step
4
Use a small offset spatula to stop the flow of icing, gently scrape cookie against edge of bowl, and flip the cookie over. Use the spatula to spread the icing to pop any air bubbles, and make sure it goes all the way to the edges. The glaze should quickly smooth out on its own. If not, thin it out a bit until it does. Use your fingers to wipe away any icing on the outside edges.
Step
5
Continue in this way until you have mixed nine different colors and coated 2 or 3 of the cookies in each color. Let dry completely, a few hours. Cookies will keep in an airtight container up to 3 days.
Ratings
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out of 5
645
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Cooking Notes
P
What gel food coloring do people recommend?
Tracey T
I've used Julie Usher's cookie cookbook (& YouTube and website) for cookie decoration inspiration, and she recommends the Chefmaster liqua-gel colors. I find those to be vibrant, with no weird off tastes. I also always add just a drop or to of Fiori di Sicilia flavoring to any sugar cookie recipe for a hint of lemon/orange flavor that really kicks the flavor up. King Arthur Flour's website sells it.
Tessa
If you change something basic about a recipe, don't blame the original writer and don't thank them sarcastically. Splenda is not a substitute for sugar or for corn syrup (BTW Karo is not high fructose corn syrup). And do you mean you used artificial vanilla (why not real) instead of food coloring?
SarahM
These are beautiful. Would love a short video that shows the glazing technique start to finish.
Felicia R.
AmeriColor gel colors, all the way. The sheer color variety is fantastic, but, more practically, they stay vibrant, smooth, and mix well. AmeriColor gels also don't require as much to achieve the color you're looking for. A second choice is Chef Master brand. Wilton brand makes me want to throw things against the wall.
Meaux
There is a slide show demonstrating many of the techniques, including the color glaze here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/dining/christmas-cookies.html
Chuck Mall
Americolor is the best and works very well.
nyrkr
There is a video of Susan Spungen decorating her cookies : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkKbbN2fG54
Kate
Pretty sure this was a joke, Tessa. And a hilarious one, once you've read a few pages of these comments!
Amy
In response to the question about what type of food coloring...I'd recommend natural products. You won't get the deep colors, but you also won't get all the chemicals/dyes that many, especially kids, have reactions to.
suz
These were so much fun and relatively easy to make. I used India Tree food coloring made from vegetables- the colors are perfectly vibrant. Truly a show stopper recipe. My daughter gave them 5 thumbs up.
Susan Spungen
this icing can get spotty after a few days- so if you want to keep them for a longer time, I do suggest royal icing. But also if your gingerbread cookie is more buttery, sometimes the oils will get absorbed up into the icing
jond
this was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed mixing the colors to try to get shades that i would normally not see on cookies.
Kate
Ah, good to know. Royal icing it is for the rest of them!
RV - A cook from Napa CA
These are very pretty cookies and quite good. When icing them, it is best to dip them in the icing to get it more even.
David
Making these cookies was a number of firsts for me: using a rolling pin, using a cookie cutter, using food color. Fun on all accounts. They came out really well.For me, the glaze was too viscous to use without adding more (than the 3 tbsp) water. I think I added somewhere between 4 and 8 more tbsp. Was fairly easy to work with after that.Note on food coloring. The gel set I bought for this didn't include white, which I'll get next time. Some of the colors I'd have liked to lighten.
Jason
Takes color nicely but is just too sugary. I’d add some more lemon juice. Also, it was very very dry for me. I almost doubled the amount of water used (even though I weighed the sugar).
CherylADK
I was skeptical at first but the glaze was outstanding. Shiny, with good color and easy to handle. I also took some edible gold paint and painted a gold swath on each cookie. Simple and elegant.
LizzieMac
Is the corn syrup the key to the gloss? My royal icing is always dull. I need gloss.
Gary
Just finished decorating the sugar cookies. Soon we will taste them. The icing turned out just the right consistency and after not getting the colors similar to the pic in the recipe I went Jackson Pollock and had fun. Hope the taste lives up to the experience.
Becky
This made enough frosting to decorate a double batch of cookies. I like the idea of using more lemon juice to water down the icing, instead of water. Easy frosting to work with, even though mine was a bit drippier than probably intended. I used small baby spoons to scoop and spread the frosting, worked well!
Beth
Has anyone ever tried to freeze these?
Lori
Does this work with Karo Lyte? ... says on the bottle not so good for candy
Therese
I wish she had discussed in the recipe (and in the video) how to get those vibrant colors, as the colors seem to be the whole point of the cookie. I use Americolor gels, but once you add them to white frosting, they loose any vibrancy. Especially the red. I found a hack for getting a brighter red that I am going to try, but the hack is for buttercream frosting, not royal icing. I'm hoping it still works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mHP3MTCBoA
Deb
The glaze makes 2 cups. If you divide it into 1/3 cup portions you only get 6 portions....so do I need to make 1.5 times the glaze to get 9 different colours?
embers + feathers
Cookies were delicious- flavor is a nice blend of traditional sugar cookie and shortbread. Thought the icing was a mixed bag - I did this with my five kids all under the age of 12, and the consistency was good for them to work with. Lots of licking fingers, so unlike with royal icing, don’t have to worry about raw egg whites. However, I didn’t love the flavor, though weird taste is less noticeable when on the cookie. Kids (and husband) still scarfed them up.
T
Is there a substitute for light corn syrup in the glaze recipe?
CF
Great icing recipe, it dries to the right texture and the lemon brings a nice depth of flavor.
KMG
This was a very easy recipe and turned out pretty nice, although I didn’t get exactly the colors in the photo. (I definitely could have tried harder to match them.) I will say that as a novice baker, for me it wasn’t worth the time it took to bake the cookies & color each batch of icing. There wasn’t anything particularly special about these cookies. That said, this recipe isn’t claiming to be anything it’s not. It’s very straightforward and I didn’t have any trouble with any of the elements.
WLTP
can we use something else besides corn syrup
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