Quick Tip Tuesday -- 3 ways to tell if your icing is too thin

I'm not quite sure what I've done to Autumn. But the fact of the matter is... that Autumn doesn't like me. Either that or Autumn REALLY likes me and is also a 10 year old boy. That explanation makes more sense because I've been super nice to Autumn. I welcome it with open arms. I decorate my house so it feels all comfortable. We get ready for the visit weeks before it actually comes. And a few weeks ago it got cold out of nowhere. And it rained. And we wore jackets and opened the windows and thought that life was beautiful and fresh and livable again. My kids were skipping to school. Actually, that might have been me again. I just love Autumn. And then...

Autumn went away. And left a joy sucking hole behind in the shape of Autumn. I refused to admit that it was gone. I left my windows open in the face of the returned heat. You couldn't have ripped my jacket from my overheated body. And I felt completely justified when Autumn came back a week later. I thought maybe Autumn had just needed some time alone to work things out. Maybe he had forgotten to finish his homework and just had to go back home real quick. Or maybe he was stuck in traffic. (I'm still not sure how old Autumn really is.) But none of that mattered because Autumn was back. And we were perfect together. Until... Autumn left again. This time though, I'm not waiting around looking out my window for him to come back and play. I'm just going to sulk. And then I'm going to make some cookies. With icing. But not this icing. Because something is wrong with this icing. It's too thin. Let me show you.

1. Look closely at this cookie. Do you see all those hundreds of tiny bubbles? The icing is too thin. All icing has bubbles in it, but thin icing is much easier for the bubbles to move through. So they turn into little race car bubbles and shoot for the top.

2. This one is easier to see in the points of the star. The icing isn't flat. It sticks to the icing outline and then drops in the middle. Like this:

3. I'm sure we all know this one. If your icing moves too fast and overflows your outlines or the edges of the cookie before it has had time to dry... it's too thin.

So what can you do?

You have a couple of options. You can add more thick white icing to the bowl, or you can add sifted powdered sugar to the bowl. I prefer the sifted powdered sugar option because I feel like it doesn't change the color of the icing as much as adding more white icing. BUT... I'm lazy and never really sift it, so sometimes I get powdered sugar clumps.

NEED MORE?