The best gift is one made with your own hands. Painted New Year's gingerbread cookies are not only a beautiful and festive gift idea, you will get real pleasure from making them.
Or maybe this will become your favorite hobby.
If you have already baked cookies yourself, making these gingerbread cookies will not be at all difficult for you.
This article provides a recipe for sugar cookies and icing for painting gingerbread cookies from culinary expert Irina Khlebnikova.
What you need to make gingerbread cookies
3-D gingerbread cutters (for cutting and imprinting a design on the dough)
Food coloring (for making glaze)
Pastry bag with a nozzle with a diameter of 1-2 mm (several pieces for a separate color of glaze)
1 egg white
A few drops of lemon juice
Powdered sugar
100 g butter
100 g sugar
100 g powdered sugar
2 large eggs
A few drops of vanilla essence (flavoring)
500-550 g flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
Sugar dough recipe for gingerbread
- 100 g butter
- 100 g sugar
- 100 g powdered sugar
- 2 large eggs
- a few drops of vanilla essence (flavoring)
- 500-550 g flour
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. baking powder
Beat the butter in a mixer for 1-2 minutes.
Add sugar and powdered sugar and beat for another 3-4 minutes.
Beat 2 eggs into the mixture and beat for another 5-7 minutes.
Add a few drops of vanilla essence (optional).
Using a spoon, add half of the total amount of flour, a quarter of a teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of baking powder.
While beating the dough with a mixer, gradually add the remaining flour one spoon at a time until a soft and at the same time non-sticky dough is formed.
Divide the resulting dough in half, roll it into layers, wrap it in cling film and place it in the refrigerator for 30-40 minutes.
After this, we take out the dough and roll it out again to a thickness of 0.5-0.7 mm and put it in the refrigerator for 6-7 hours so that it cools completely.
Cutting gingerbread cookies from prepared dough
To cut out gingerbread cookies, you will need special 3-D cuttings, which are sold in specialized culinary stores.
They can be used to cut out gingerbread, as well as imprint a design that will be convenient to paint with icing.
We take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it warm up a little for 10-15 minutes so that it gives a good, clear print.
Lightly dust the cutout with flour so that it separates well from the dough, and cut the gingerbread cookies with it. There should be a clear imprint of the design on top.
Bake the gingerbread cookies in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 10-12 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a plate to cool completely.
Preparing glaze for painting gingerbread cookies
To prepare the glaze, you can take the white of a raw egg, or dry egg white, which is sold in stores.
If you use raw egg white, before breaking, the egg must be thoroughly washed in water and soda to destroy all bacteria on the shell, and dried with a napkin.
For a small portion of glaze you will need:
- 1 egg white
- a few drops of lemon juice
- powdered sugar
Separate the egg white into a bowl and add lemon juice. While rubbing the mixture with a spatula, gradually add powdered sugar until a homogeneous, snow-white and fairly thick glaze is formed.
The main problem with the glaze is that it dries very quickly, so cover the dishes with the prepared glaze with a damp towel.
Let the glaze sit for 20-30 minutes, after which it can be painted.
To do this, put some of the glaze in a separate bowl and color it with water-soluble food coloring, adding a few drops.
If the consistency of the glaze has thickened, add a few drops of water. Do this carefully so that the glaze does not turn out too runny.
The pattern on the gingerbread will depend on the thickness of the glaze. You can estimate the thickness of the glaze by the time it drains.
If the drawn line disappears after 5-7 seconds, the glaze is liquid. It is used to fill in the details of a drawing.
From 10 to 12 seconds - medium thickness. It is used for outline and for filling in details of the drawing. This glaze is ideal for beginners.
About 20 seconds - quite thick. This glaze is used to draw an outline.
We put colored glaze on the pastry bags and start painting the gingerbread cookies.
How to paint gingerbread cookies with icing - clearly in the video.
- How to make gingerbread cookies with glaze at home
Video tutorial on cooking and painting gingerbread cookies from chef Irina Khlebnikova.
Gingerbread painting video - Olaf from Frozen
The cookies are already on the way, and the buns are asking to come out of the oven, but something is still missing. We need the final finishing touch. And if you are not just a cook, but also an artist at heart, then sugar icing is what you need.
And when under your hands the gingerbread cookies are covered with intricate paintings, and the Easter cakes are decorated with snow-white glossy “caps” of glaze, you will feel like a little bit of magic.
White sugar icing
Heat the cream, add the butter and keep the pan on the fire until it melts. Then add powdered sugar and vanilla,
beat with a mixer until smooth.
This snow-white glaze is simply ideal for Easter cakes.
Powdered sugar icing for buns
Mix powdered sugar with starch and vanilla.
Bring the cream to a boil and pour into the powder. Knead well and immediately coat the fresh buns - the cooled glaze thickens quickly.
Sugar-protein glaze with liqueur
Add powdered sugar and warm, but not hot water to the whites and beat with a blender.
Flavor the sugar-white mixture with liqueur. Depending on which liqueur you choose, you can get very interesting combinations of taste and aroma.
The glaze can be used for painting and for coating confectionery products.
Whip the cream with sugar.
Melt the chocolate in a water bath or in the microwave and carefully fold it into the whipped cream.
Custard protein sugar glaze
Beat the whites with sugar in a water bath (about 5 minutes). Then remove from the water bath and beat for another 5 minutes.
Pour this glaze over cooled baked goods. It dries quickly, becomes smooth and shiny.
Caramel sugar glaze
Melt the butter, add milk and sugar. Bring to a boil until the sugar is completely dissolved and 1 minute.
Remove from heat, add half the caster sugar and beat until cool.
Then add vanilla, the remaining powder, and beat everything again.
The finished glaze tastes very much like caramel. Suitable for cookies and gingerbreads.
Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting
Melt the butter in a frying pan, add powdered sugar, cinnamon, salt and milk. The thickness of the glaze depends on the amount of milk. Cook for a few minutes, stirring.
The glaze can be poured over pancakes, pudding or sweet porridge, or added to pastries or desserts.
Sugar icing for gingerbread
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Dissolve sugar in water and bring the syrup to a boil. When large transparent bubbles begin to appear on the surface (temperature 110 degrees), remove the syrup from the heat and let cool slightly.
Cover large gingerbread cookies with icing brushes. Small ones can be completely immersed in syrup and placed on a wire rack.
Sugar icing for gingerbread cookies
Pour milk into the melted butter, add salt and powdered sugar.
Knead until creamy. If the glaze is too thick, add a little more milk or water. You can add powdered sugar to the liquid glaze.
At the end, add vanilla and mix everything again.
Apply the finished glaze to the cookies using a brush or pastry syringe.
Sugar icing for gingerbread house
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar.
This glaze can be used to both glue parts of a gingerbread house and decorate it. To prevent the glaze from hardening too quickly, add a drop of lemon juice.
Colored sugar icing for cookies
Pour the milk into the powdered sugar and knead to a paste consistency.
Add syrup and almond extract.
Divide the glaze into jars and color each one with the desired food coloring.
This glaze is used by professional confectioners. It's great for decorating holiday cookies.
It’s hard to imagine a sweetness more atmospheric than gingerbread with glaze: just look at the photo to feel this spicy smell, hear the delicious crunch and get into the holiday mood. Of course, such cookies are incredibly popular in the winter, but in the summer you will get no less pleasure from tea with aromatic homemade gingerbread. All that remains is to find out how to make this culinary ambition a reality!
On the way to the perfect gingerbread
When it comes to baking, there are some things you should know before you go shopping for ingredients so you can be prepared for the pitfalls and know the basics of baking techniques. Your gingerbread cookies will definitely be a hit if you can follow these 3 rules:
1. The ingredients must be of high quality
We know that this truth is already textbook, but with baked goods the risk of seeing it in action is much higher than with soups or main courses. As for flour, eggs and sugar, it’s difficult to go wrong with them: even cheap brands will cope with the task. But it is better to choose proven butter. It is believed that real butter cannot have a fat content lower than 82.5%, so you will have to pay a little extra for the taste and texture of your gingerbread cookies.
It is not necessary to use premium flour. The first or second grade will give the cookie its own chic and make it more natural
2. You need to work with the dough quickly
After you take the finished dough out of the refrigerator, it is better not to stretch the rubber: if you are distracted or simply take too long to roll out and cut out the gingerbread cookies, the butter will begin to melt and the dough may float. In this regard, preparing ginger cookies in the summer is a little more difficult, since you will have to act even faster.
Tip: When you take the dough out of the refrigerator, immediately turn on the oven to preheat. Did you cut out the cookies first and then turn on the oven? The outline will float and the cookies will not come out very beautiful.
3. You will have to act according to the situation
No matter how hard you try to follow the recipe, the chance of getting a 100% copy of what the author came up with is negligible. A slight deviation in proportions, a changed brand of one of the ingredients or a different oven is enough - and such a carefully written recipe will leave you alone with cookies spreading on the baking sheet or dough crumbling when rolling out. These unpleasant moments can be avoided if you focus on the texture and are not afraid to make your own changes to the recipe. Is the dough runny and sticky? Add a little flour. Is the dough falling apart and not wanting to come together into a ball? Mix some oil into it. Be bold and trust your culinary intuition!
Exemplary gingerbread cookies in just an hour and a half
If you think that an hour and a half is a long time, let us remind you that the dough usually spends about 2 hours in the refrigerator alone, not to mention the labor-intensive rolling or painstaking mixing of ingredients. How to meet the deadline, what ingredients to buy, and how to do everything right? Let's tell you in order.
What will you need?
- 250g flour (plus some for adjustment)
- 100 g butter,
- 1 egg,
- 50 g honey,
- 100 g sugar,
- 1 tsp baking powder,
- 2 tsp ground ginger,
- 1 tsp cinnamon,
- a pinch of nutmeg.
Without coloring with cocoa, the color of the gingerbread cookies will be something like this:
Secret: In all the photos, the gingerbread cookies are brown, but it is very difficult to achieve this color without coloring. Usually they add a little cocoa to the cookies or use brown sugar instead of white - this will make the color more saturated. Although the combination of honey + cinnamon gives a beautiful golden hue, which intensifies as it cools, we recommend preparing the first batch without coloring.
What to do?
- The oil should be very soft, but not liquid, so you won’t be able to use a microwave or water bath. It is advisable to leave it to warm up at room temperature for about an hour in advance.
- If the honey is not liquid, you need to melt it in a water bath. You can also microwave it, just make sure it doesn’t boil.
- Now grind the butter and sugar with a fork, pour the egg and honey into the mixture and mix. The honey should not be hot, otherwise the egg will curdle!
- Separately mix flour, baking powder and spices. We leave the sifting to your discretion: if you thoroughly mix the ingredients, the difference in the taste of the finished gingerbread cookies will be noticeable only to special connoisseurs.
- Gradually stir the dry mixture into the oil mixture until large pellets form. It’s quite convenient to do this with a fork rather than a mixer, although here you have to decide on your preferences.
- Large crumbs should easily form a ball, the consistency of which will be slightly reminiscent of marzipan. If the dough crumbles or spreads, don't be afraid to deviate from the recipe by adding a little butter or flour.
Proper gingerbread dough does not stretch and has a consistency similar to marzipan
- Now we make a pancake out of the dough, wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for 40 minutes. In this form, the dough will cool faster and will be easier to roll out. By the way, if there is too much dough, it can be stored in the freezer for several months!
- After 40 minutes the dough can be rolled out. This is best done between two sheets of baking paper, but the good old method of flouring your rolling pin and countertop will also work. The thickness of our gingerbread cookies is about half a centimeter.
- We cut out the cookies using a mold, remove the excess dough, transfer the blanks onto baking paper using a knife and repeat the rolling again with the remaining dough. It may take 4 or 5 such passes until all the prepared dough is utilized. By the way, do not spread the cookies too tightly, because they will increase in size a little in the oven.
- The baking tray with the cookies is placed in a well-heated oven at 180˚, where they are baked for 5 to 12 minutes: the time greatly depends on the thickness of the gingerbread and your preference for softness or crispiness. In general, once the edges begin to brown, the cookies are ready and can be removed.
Right out of the oven, the baked goods are indeed very similar to fluffy and soft gingerbread cookies, but as they cool, the cookies settle and harden a little, becoming cookie-like. So, when you want to keep the cookies in the oven for an extra 2-3 minutes, keep in mind that with tea, you may not be eating gingerbread, but almost a cracker.
Interesting: The shelf life of any cookies, even homemade ones, is several months, but, of course, over time the aroma will go away and the dough will become stale. It's useful to know how long gingerbread can last, but it's even better to make enough of it to realistically eat in about a week.
It's not the same without the glaze!
Gingerbread cookies are good in their pure form, but, you see, gingerbread cookies painted with colored icing look much more tempting, and sometimes it seems that such decoration makes them even tastier. Of course, you can buy ready-made glaze in the store, but since we are already involved in home cooking, we suggest going all the way and making the glaze with your own hands, and our small master class will help you with this.
Option on the water
Worried about raw eggs? Then use glaze on water! It may not be as boiling white as on an egg, but it is 100% safe and no less tasty!
The glaze on water turns out translucent, but it sticks to cookies no worse than protein
What will you need?
- 150 g powdered sugar.
- 2 tsp lemon juice for white paste or any other juice to add a light tint.
- A little cold water.
- Food coloring optional.
What to do?
The basic principle here is: a lot of powder - little liquid. Just carefully add the juice and water in small portions until the powder forms a sticky mass. Kneading can take a lot of effort and time, because soaking a glass of powder with a few drops of water is not so easy. You can breathe a sigh of relief when a drop of glaze holds its shape without spreading.
Protein option
The glaze on the whites turns out snow-white, but it will require a little more effort from you. But if you are not too lazy to carry out this experiment, the cookies will turn out simply fascinating, like from the pages of culinary magazines!
For a dense contour glaze, beat the mixture at maximum speed of the mixer.
What will you need?
- 150 g powdered sugar.
- 1 egg.
- Food coloring optional.
What to do?
Separate the white from the yolk using any method known to you. The main thing is that the yolk does not get into our mixture. Now gradually pour the powder into the egg whites, beating with a mixer at high speed. When a drop of glaze holds its shape, you can begin painting.
Tip: If you want to fill rather than outline, just make the glaze thinner. Just keep in mind that the filling takes longer to dry than the outline, and it is better to leave such cookies to dry overnight, especially if you plan to transport them.
Well, all that remains is to put the icing in a special confectionery bag or a regular plastic bag, cut off the spout and give free rein to your imagination. Good luck with your experiments and delicious gingerbread!
Glaze for sweet gingerbreads emphasizes their pleasant taste.
This delicacy has its own characteristics in preparation. If you follow them, baked goods will always be appetizing, tasty and effective.
General principles for preparing delicate glaze
What consistency should gingerbread glaze have? It should be neither liquid nor thick. Then the mixture will adhere well to the dough product and will not drain from its surface. Glaze that is too thick requires a few drops of warm liquid.
If the aromatic mixture for decorating baked goods turns out to be liquid, you need to add powdered sugar. This ingredient can be prepared from granulated sugar by grinding it in a coffee grinder.
Lemon juice is actively used to prepare the glaze. This liquid component replaces water. It has a positive effect on the taste of the glaze. Gingerbreads that are too sweet need lemon juice.
The eggs will help the glaze acquire a dense and soft consistency. Yolks are added to the mixture to give it a yellowish tint. It is better to dry baked goods with icing in the oven at a temperature of about 100 degrees. A little heating will protect the human body from salmonella.
To make the color of the finished glaze brighter, you need to add food coloring. Then the dough product will take on a festive look. A spoonful of raspberry jam contributes to the red tint of the glaze and the magical raspberry aroma. Turmeric will give the mixture an orange tint.
The glaze can be applied to the entire surface of the dough product or used to create a beautiful design. It is better to draw on gingerbread cookies with an ordinary syringe without a needle.
Grated chocolate glaze with sour cream for gingerbread cookies
Ingredients
sugar – 80 g
grated dark chocolate without additives – 130 g
sour cream – 245 g
Cooking method
Grind sugar with sour cream in a saucepan.
Place on low heat. Wait until the sugar is completely dissolved.
The glaze must be stirred all the time.
Pour the grated chocolate into the pan. Keep on fire until the chocolate mass becomes homogeneous.
Remove container from heat.
Wait until the mixture thickens.
Dip gingerbread cookies into glaze. Place on a plate.
Serve with tea after the glaze has completely dried.
White glaze for gingerbread
Ingredients
Chicken egg white – 1 pc.
Powdered sugar – 225 gr.
Lemon juice – 4 ml
Cooking method
Pour lemon juice into the dish.
Add protein.
Beat the mixture.
Pour in the sifted powder.
Stir until the protein mixture stops flowing from the whisk.
Pour the frosting into an airtight container.
Before use, add 2 drops of lemon juice. Mix.
Place the finished gingerbread glaze in a plastic bag with a hole of about 1 cm.
Apply a thick glaze to the gingerbread outline. Wait until it dries.
Using the same mixture, draw even lines of equal thickness.
Use a toothpick to create drawings from the lines.
White chocolate frosting for Christmas gingerbread
Ingredients
powdered sugar – 160 g
white chocolate – 195 g
cold milk – 40 ml
coconut flakes – 70 g
Cooking method
Break the chocolate into small pieces.
Place in a bowl. Melt in a warm water bath.
Pour powdered sugar into a bowl.
Pour in 20 g of milk. Mix.
Pour the liquid mixture into the melted chocolate.
Stir the gingerbread glaze until smooth.
Pour in the remaining milk.
Beat the glaze with a mixer.
Decorate the gingerbread cookies with a mixture of white chocolate and powdered sugar.
Sprinkle coconut flakes on top.
Butter chocolate glaze for gingerbread
Ingredients
powdered sugar – 155 g
butter – 2 g
cocoa – 36 g
water – 60 ml
Cooking method
Fill the container with powdered sugar.
Add cocoa powder.
Place the oil in a saucepan. Melt.
Pour water into a separate container. Boil. Pour into the cocoa powder mixture.
Stir until smooth.
Place melted butter over food.
Use the prepared chocolate buttercream frosting immediately.
Icing for gingerbread
Ingredients
3 chicken eggs
340 g powdered sugar
15 g tangerine zest
Cooking method
Divide the yolks and whites into different bowls.
Beat the protein mass until foam rises.
Add powdered sugar.
Beat at maximum speed.
Add the zest. Gently stir the aromatic mixture.
Decorate gingerbread masterpieces with icing.
Homemade orange glaze for gingerbread
Ingredients
freshly squeezed orange juice – 145 ml
powdered sugar – 250 gr.
food coloring – 2 gr.
starch – 48 g
Cooking method
Pour freshly squeezed orange juice into a container. Heat.
Add starch and powdered sugar.
Stir until smooth.
Add food coloring.
Stir until smooth.
Place the prepared gingerbread glaze on the gingerbread.
Butterscotch gingerbread frosting
Ingredients
hard toffee – 220 g
butter – 45 g
milk – 60 ml
powdered sugar – 48 g
Cooking method
Place the oil in a saucepan.
Pour milk into it.
Place the container with the ingredients on the fire.
Add toffee.
Pour out the powder. Mix.
Cook until the candies are completely dissolved, stirring the ingredients.
Apply the finished glaze to the gingerbread cookies in several layers.
Glaze with rum for gingerbread
Ingredients
powdered sugar – 255 gr.
hot water – 240 ml
rum – 24 ml
Cooking method
Sift powdered sugar into a container.
Add the required amount of water.
Pour in the rum. Grind the mixture thoroughly.
The finished glaze can be applied to products.
Serve gingerbread cookies with icing for a holiday dinner.
Fruit glaze for gingerbread
Ingredients
sugar – 180 gr.
dried plums – 70 gr.
canned cherries – 60 gr.
chocolate chips – 30 gr.
red food coloring – 4 gr.
almonds – 25 gr.
cocoa powder – 48 gr.
butter – 55 gr.
milk – 105 ml
Cooking method
Remove the butter from the refrigerator to soften.
Pour cocoa into a dish.
Add sugar.
Pour milk into a separate container. Heat the dairy product. Add to container with sugar and cocoa mixture.
Heat over low heat, stirring the contents. Boil. Cook for 3 minutes.
Remove container from heat.
Add butter. Mix.
Pour hot glaze over baked goods.
- The butter will make the gingerbread glaze shiny.
- Uneven surfaces in the baked goods must be cut off while the dough is warm so that the gingerbread glaze lays out in an even layer.
- Do not beat the egg whites too hard, as the icing will become saturated with air and will bubble.
- Properly melted chocolate will create the perfect frosting.
- White chocolate does not contain cocoa powder, so when melting it is necessary to calculate the temperature conditions.
- You should not melt 240 g of products at the same time.
- The gingerbread glaze should be moderately thick.
- It is better to heat the ingredients for the glaze in a water bath.
- Properly prepared glaze does not spread. This mixture is convenient for drawing patterns.
- To make the gingerbread icing snow-white, you need to choose powdered sugar with a very light shade.
- Beetroot makes the glaze red, orange juice makes it yellow, and parsley makes it green.
- Orange juice will turn the mixture pale yellow.
- It is better to use powder that you prepare yourself so that the glaze has a delicate aroma.
- It is recommended to sift the powdered sugar.
- If you grease the baked goods with a thin layer of jam, the glaze will lie perfectly evenly. After complete drying, a shine will appear.
- To prepare the glaze, you should not choose porous chocolate. If you add a spoonful of cocoa to the mixture, its color will become more saturated.
- Egg whites must be whipped in a dry and clean container. It is better to use a glass or porcelain vessel.
- The whisk must be dry.
- To speed up the process of whipping egg whites into foam, you need to use the following tricks:
- add a pinch of salt;
- put lemon juice with salt and powdered sugar;
- pour a few drops of vinegar;
- cool the protein mass.
- If there are residual fat and drops of liquid on the whisk, this will interfere with whipping the whites.
- In an aluminum bowl, the whites darken and the yolks acquire a greenish tint.
- If there are cracks in the enamel bowl, small particles of enamel may fall into the prepared mixture.
- The mixture to which the beaten egg white is added should be stirred carefully to retain the air in the protein mass. Otherwise it will settle and become liquid.
- To make the mixture thick, you need to beat it at very high speeds.
- To whip the sour cream better, you need to beat in the white of a chicken egg. Cool the mass.
- It will be easier to whip the butter if you first cut it into pieces and place it in a bowl to soften, immersed in warm water.
- When preparing the glaze with the addition of flour, you must use a long whisk. Then the finished mass will be smooth.
- While stirring the glaze with a whisk, you need to make movements describing the number 8.
- The butter glaze should be applied to the gingerbread cookies only after it has cooled.
- The gingerbread icing will be smooth if you smooth it out with a knife immersed in hot water.
- If you sprinkle the glaze with starch, the mixture will not spill over the dough treat.
- To prepare the chocolate glaze, melt the chocolate in a hot water bath, stirring gently until the product melts completely. The finished glaze will not have a burnt taste.
- Chocolate can be heated to a temperature of 45 degrees.
- The walls of the dish in which the chocolate pieces will be melted must be greased with butter. Then the chocolate will not stick to them.
- It is necessary to apply glaze to the top of the gingerbread from the center to the edges, then the layer will be uniform.
- If you don't have chocolate on hand, you can use cocoa powder to make the glaze.
- When making cocoa glaze, it is very important to first add the powder and then the water, stirring the mixture thoroughly as you do so. Otherwise, the powder in the glaze will turn into lumps and it will be difficult to stir.
- Prepare the gingerbread glaze over low heat.
- To stop drawing with icing without a drop, you need to make a quick upward movement away from you.
- For drawings made from chocolate glaze, you need to put a transparent film on the picture.
- If you use one type of chocolate, the glaze will not separate or curl.
- If you glaze the gingerbread cookies in two layers, you need to do this with a short break for it to harden.
- It is better to store the sweet mixture for decorating gingerbread in cling film to prevent it from drying out.
- If you only used part of the prepared glaze, you can freeze the remainder.
- Gingerbread with glaze can be served with tea, cocoa, milk, yogurt, compote, coffee and kefir.
It is done very quickly, looks great and without dyes. It’s just hard to post it for you, because... I do it by eye. I prepare glaze without egg whites using water, I’m paranoid about raw eggs, but instead of water you can add any fruit or berry juice. The glaze dries quickly, but if you want to give cookies with it to someone or transport them, i.e. pack it in something, let it dry on the cookies for 8-10 hours.
I am giving you an approximate ratio of products for glaze, so I advise you to take them with a small reserve. For about 3 trays of cookies:
- 150 g powdered sugar
- approximately 2 tsp. lemon juice (Lemon and orange juice do not give color, but they give a citrus flavor. You can add any other freshly squeezed juice from fruits or berries.)
- 1 tbsp. cold boiled water (you may need more or less water, so It's better to add it a little at a time)
- dyes as desired (I used gel dyes, which I have been working with for a long time)
Pour powdered sugar into a deep bowl and add juice.
Now add a little water at a time (in the photo you can see that I immediately add a tablespoon, but you do it a little at a time, because the powdered sugar is quite expensive, and I take it from a friend for 5 kg, so I don’t count it.) and mix everything very well. The important thing here is to have patience and mix the liquid well into the sugar. If necessary, add more water or powdered sugar.
You should get a viscous mass, not too thick and not runny, without lumps of powder. How I check the readiness of the glaze: use a teaspoon to scoop out a little glaze and drop it onto a clean, dry and smooth surface. If the drop holds and does not spread in all directions at once, then it has the desired consistency.
The glaze dries quickly, so it’s better to use it little by little to decorate cookies. And to the slightly dried glaze, just add a few drops of juice or water and stir.
Before the New Year, Ilya Nikolaevich and I prepared hundreds of ginger cookies and decorated them. And I was often asked what we use to decorate with icing. Disposable piping bags cost a lot, as does the parchment paper from which the icing bags are made. We use regular packages 
for food products.
Below we will show you how we do it.
We take a regular bag, but they come in two types, ours had a tail along the solder, which I cut off at the corner that I wanted to use, without touching the solder itself, so that there were no holes.
Place the glaze in a bag, no more than a tablespoon. It’s better to put it in the corner that we will use.
We collect all the icing in the corner with our hands.
We cut off the small tip with scissors; it is better to cut off the smallest tip first and check whether the thickness of the glaze line is sufficient for you.
I'm right-handed, so I take the bag of icing in my right hand, squeeze it, and start squeezing the icing onto the cookies. If the glaze is thick enough, you won’t need any effort to squeeze it out. You define the drawing yourself. If you use dyes, distribute the glaze among several cups and color the contents of each in the desired color.
If you don't have cookie cutters to cut out different shapes from the dough, you can use a glass or shot glass and use them to cut out circles, which you can then decorate as Christmas balls or snowflakes.
The glaze dries quickly, but if you want to give cookies with it to someone or transport them, i.e. pack it in something, let it dry on the cookies for 8-10 hours.