Glacé Icing Trial: Dairy-free, Gluten-free, Soy-free

I’ve been working on creating a Joseph-safe sugar cookie to accompany my Christmas short story. (Linked short story is undergoing revisions, which I’m very excited for, so the final product is going to be much better than you see there.) Last week, I got the recipe figured out. The cookies didn’t crumble into dust, they held their shapes as they baked, and best of all, my kids kept trying to steal bites every time I turned my back.

The missing limbs on the gingerbread men are due to children stealing bites, not because the cookies themselves fell apart

For the final test, I had to frost them, so I decided to look for an easy frosting to make dairy-free, and I chose the Glacé icing from Our Best Bites.

The Changes

The only change I made was to swap coconut milk for the whole milk. Since I didn’t have very many cookies, I only did half the recipe, and still ended up with leftover frosting.

The Method

Whisk together milk and sugar until you get the consistency you want. I added at least half a cup more sugar than the recipe called for because I wanted a thicker frosting. But I stopped when I realized I already had more frosting than I was going to use. So, in the future, I would start with less milk than I expect to use, and slowly add more if the frosting is too thick.

Add in the syrup and vanilla, then split into separate bowls and add food coloring. Note that the vanilla will tint the frosting so it’s not so pure white anymore.

I didn’t do anything fancy while decorating these cookies. Sad to say, my decorating skills are far below that of many other bloggers out there. Sara on Our Best Bites has tons of tips and tricks on how to design with this frosting. Still, I had fun spreading the frosting with my daughter while Joseph munched on the complete cookies.

Hooray for the cookies holding up to the frosting!

Glacé Icing

Adapted from Our Best Bites

Dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free

Ingredients

• 2 cups (plus extra for thickening) powdered sugar
• 3 Tablespoons coconut milk
• 3 Tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (or other extract)

Whisk together sugar and milk until it is the desired consistency. Add in syrup and extract.

Divide into bowls for different colors and frost. Let dry overnight to fully harden for stacking.

Frosts about 2 dozen cookies (your mileage may vary)

What I Thought

If I looked really hard, I could detect the coconut from the milk, but the dominant tastes were the sugar and vanilla. If I wanted a stronger coconut taste, I’m sure I could get it by using canned coconut milk, or an extract. This frosting is messy to work with, so I wouldn’t recommend it with kids unless you get it thicker than I had. Still, it’s a decent, quick frosting and you can do some really cute things with it if you have the inclination. Though in taste, it really doesn’t measure up to my favorite – cream cheese frosting. The kids gobbled down the cookies as fast with frosting as without. My husband, however, declined to eat any – frosted or not. He doesn’t care for sugar cookies.

Use this to decorate Sorghum Sugar Cookies

Shared on Gluten-free Wednesdays

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