Easy Cookie Glaze

5 from 1 vote

This easy cookie glaze dries hard and looks so pretty! It's totally egg-free so it's a great alternative to royal icing. It's easy to make and doesn't require any hard-to-find ingredients. Adjust the consistency for piping, dipping, and flooding. P.S. It tastes good too!

Prep Time5

Cook Time0

Total Time5

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cookie glaze, easy cookie glaze, easy cookie icing, glaze recipe, icing recipe

Servings: cup

Calories: 1176kcal

Ingredients

2 ¼ cups powdered sugar sifted 9 ounces
1 ½ tablespoons light corn syrup
3 tablespoons whole milk (you may need more to adjust consistency)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (use up to ¾ teaspoon)
food coloring
additional powdered sugar for thickening as needed

Instructions

Make the glaze:

In a medium bowl, combine the sifted powdered sugar, light corn syrup, 3 tablespoons whole milk, and vanilla extract. Whisk until smooth.

Adjust consistency:

The glaze should drizzle from a smooth ribbon from the whisk and hold its shape on top of the bowl of icing for 5-10 seconds before the drizzles start to soak back in.
If it’s too thick, add a little more milk (1 teaspoon at a time), if it’s too thin, add a little more powdered sugar (a few tablespoons at a time). Note that the thinner the glaze, the more cookies you will be able to frost with it and vice versa.

Dip cookies:

To dip the cookies, hold a cookie upside down by the very edges and dip in into a bowl of icing. Submerge the entire face of the cookie, but not the sides.
Lift and allow the excess icing to drip for 3-4 seconds. Flip cookie, gently wiggle it to spread icing, and set on a wire rack or lined cookie sheet to set. Pop any bubbles or swipe away drips quickly with a toothpick.
Note: if the glaze is dripping too much off the cookies, thicken it up with more powdered sugar. If it's too gloppy and hard to dip, it's too thick and you should thin it down with milk (adding small amounts at a time).

Decorating ideas:

If you want sprinkles, add them immediately. The icing begins hardening quickly. Don't use the round nonpareil sprinkles--they will bleed into the icing. I suggest a test cookie for any sprinkle you select.
If you want to pipe designs on the cookies, then wait for the first layer to dry (at least few hours).
Then, fill a small piping bag fit with a small round tip (or just cut the very end of the piping bag) and use your desired color of glaze to pipe simple designs onto your cookies. Use a thicker glaze consistency for the best results.

Storage notes;

If you want to stack the cookies, the glaze should dry for several hours (around 6-8 pending the thickness of the glaze), but preferably overnight, before stacking.
I place a layer of wax paper between each layer of cookies when storing. I’ve carefully stacked multiple layers of cookies with no problems.

Notes

Yield: About 1 cup glaze--probably a little more but I forgot to measure my final test recipe before I started decorating. Fail!

It will frost about anywhere from 25-40 cookies (about 2.5" each) depending on how thick you make it (thinner glaze goes further). To avoid frustration, make you have plenty of powdered sugar on hand in case you want to mix up more.

Preventing bubbles: Sift the powdered sugar before starting in order to minimize bubbles. If you do get bubbles, pop them with a toothpick or scribe decorating tool.

Storage: lightly cover the surface of the icing with plastic wrap (the wrap should touch the top of the glaze) and then store in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-5 days.

To store iced cookies: Cookies with dry icing can be kept at room temperature (store in a sealed airtight container) or in the fridge. Store for 3-5 days. Freeze glazed cookies up to 1-2 months. Stack completely dry cookies (overnight is ideal) in between pieces of wax paper.

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