Arkansas Razorback Cookies - Part II

For the Arkansas v. LSU tailgate, Deanna and I made razorback, helmet, and football shaped cookies. (Thank you Sarah and Bill for the football cookie cutter for my birthday!) This time I did a little research before starting the icing process. I looked up recipes for icing that hardens and I also looked up tips for how to make the icing as red as possible. Here's the recipe for the icing that hardens (very easy to make and tastes delish!)

1 cup confectioner's sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla flavoring (almond flavoring is also good)

Stir sugar and milk together in a bowl until icing mixture is smooth; beat in corn syrup and vanilla until icing mixture is smooth and glossy in appearance. Add food coloring to desired shade. Ice cookie and set aside for the icing to harden.

As far as tips for making red icing, there were many. The one I went with suggested buying Wilton's red icing tube. It looks like this.

The instructions were to gradually squeeze the red icing into the white icing until you get your desired color. Well, as you can see from the picture of Deanna and me, the icing was not exactly bright red (and I used the entire tube of Wilton's). But the tailgate was still amazing. Grant smoked some ribs and we had a ton of good food and beverages and of course beating LSU didn't hurt either!

My most recent discovery in the world of red icing is Wilton's paste. I've heard that this, because it is so concentrated, will really help make the icing a bright red. But I have yet to try it out since the Razorback basketball team has not won a game in way too long therefore I have not felt the need to make special cookies. You could say I've put my razorback cookie-making on hold in protest of their losing streak. (Come on Rotnei! What happened to your 3-pointers?)