How we do frosting in my family

I feel lucky to have shared Christmas celebrations with a variety of wonderful family and friends-- wonderful company, quirky traditions, and always delicious food.  It seems like every family has a specific style of sugar cookie frosting...and I haven't found any that I enjoy as much as the glaze-frosting I grew up with!

It's not exactly Christmas time; we were in a July heat wave with an 110 degree heat index when I whipped these up.  I found the perfect cookie cutters for a summer weekend at the cabin and couldn't resist.

Ingredients:
Powdered sugar
Half and Half
Vanilla
Food coloring
Sprinkles/cookie decorations

I opted for cookie decorating at my parents house: central air AND a big, sunny kitchen. Perfect! (I'll post another picture soon with our cute, galley kitchen that accommodates 1 1/2 people at a time.)

Instructions:
In a medium mixing bowl, pour a mountain of powdered sugar. Slowly add half and half, starting very conservatively in adding less liquid than you need.  I've always been amazed at how little liquid it takes to cut through powdered sugar!

 Stir in the half and half completely.

 Too runny?  Add more powdered sugar.  Too thick? Add (a little) more half and half.

 You'll want the glaze-frosting to flow off the spoon, not glob off in chunks, but at the same time it needs to be thick enough to leave the spoon well coated.  If the frosting is too thin, it will run right off your cookies.

 Once you've got the consistency down, add a drop or two of vanilla and stir well. (Warning: vanilla will slightly color your white frosting-- if you want the pure-white color, don't bother with the frosting flavoring.)

 Next, pour your white frosting into separate bowls, one for each color you want to frost with. Keep in mind you may want to keep some in your mixing bowl so that you can frost with white frosting.

 Drop 2-3 drops of food coloring in each of your separate bowls...

 ...Mix well, and you're ready to go!  (When I was growing up, we always had popsicle sticks around the house. Frosting with popsicle sticks works very well in that the sticks are light enough the frosting holds them in the bowls, where as with heavy table knives...well, let's just say it gets messy.)

 Turns boring sugar cookies into...colorful, delicious treats!

 Loons and bears...forgot to get pictures of the moose shape, too.  Thanks to my husband for the surprise extra birthday gift of summer time shapes cookie cutters!