After reading the other reviews I made this a little differently. I mixed the melted butter and powdered sugar in the food processor then I poured the vanilla and hot milk (instead of hot water) through the top until it was all blended. The consistency was much smoother and it was easy to spread and very pretty on top of cookies. The icing still dries nicely but you will have more time to work with it if you use milk. Delicious on the Mississippi Tea Cakes!
This icing has a good flavor but I did encounter one problem with it. It spread easily on the first four cookies but then started hardening up quickly. It became difficult to spread and didn't look as nice as the first ones. The cookies in the photo I submitted were among the first ones iced. I did try adding a little more hot water but could not gain back the smooth consistency.
This icing is wonderful on Mississippi Tea Cakes a combination which is almost TOO GOOD if you love old-fashioned soft sugar cookies!! It also lends itself well to food coloring to make the cookies festive for special occasions.
Delicious recipe! I followed FWILLIAMS suggestion and it turned out beautifully. Here's a tip to everyone else: to keep frosting from hardening soak a paper towel with cold water and put it over the bowl the frosting is in. Keeps it nice and moist in the fridge or on the counter. This went great with my gingerbread muffins.
The flavor is wonderful and next time I will use milk and try the food processor method as it did harden very quickly. I covered it with a paper towel and worked quickly and it came out fine. I've been looking for a long time for a frosting to harden the way this does. This was a practice batch as I cheated and used Pillsbury sugar cookie dough and added rainbow sprinkles and chopped vanilla chips. This frosting was perfect spread on top with a few added sprinkles. Very pretty too! Thanks for a recipe I'll be using often!
This icing is great if you need something that dries quickly so you can stack cookies on top of each other.
Perfect! Quick and easy and tastes great with the sour cream cookies. Which are my husbands favorite!!
i'm sorry to say but to me this tasted like butter. i had to throw it out and not put icing on the cookies. but it was easy to make and it looked nicer than the usual glaze.
This is a great basic frosting and is fantastic with the Sour Cream Cookies II recipe on this site. If you don't melt/soften the butter be prepared for some wrist pain. I somehow managed to put enough water in the mix to keep the frosting from hardening. Can't quite say how I did that except for the water temperature and using a closer to 4 tsp than 3.