So, What The Heck Is Glaze Icing?

Funny you should ask! In this blog, we discuss everything about cookie Glaze. Not mirror glaze you use for cakes. Not glaze that you dip your donuts in. And not the kind of glaze that goes on other confections. The type of Glaze that some of us Cookiers use in lieu of Royal icing or butter cream. It looks something like this:

or like this:

or this:

But before we get into the ins and outs of Glaze Icing, let me give you a little bit of a back story:

Three years ago, I asked myself that exact same question: WHAT THE HECK IS GLAZE ICING??? Most of us, when we stumble upon this thing called decorated sugar cookies, learn how to make and use Royal icing and within a few tries, can produce a pretty decent looking cookie. And then it happens! We fall in love with cookie decorating and inhale every blog post and YouTube video there is and try to get into as many Facebook cookie groups and follow all the big Cookiers on several social media platforms, eager to learn and absorb all there is to learn and absorb about cookies, am I right?

Then, if you’re like me, you’re thinking to yourself, “Hmm, I wonder if I could earn a buck or two doing what I love doing?” Now, if you live in the United States of America, you quickly learn, that working out of your home without a license (aka a Cottage Food Operator’s Permit [CFO] or something similar), could potentially get you into deep cookie trouble! While not all U.S. states have such laws in effect, most do, and the easiest way to find out is make a quick Google search (or search engine of your choice) for your county and state. It is important that you not only search your state, but your county as well, as many counties within a state (hello California!) have different interpretations of the CFO laws. Meaning, since this whole CFO law came into effect in January of 2013, counties are still learning all the ins and outs of it. And some don't even know such a thing exists.

But, I am not proficient in all things CFO, so don't ask me too many questions about it. But what I DO know, is that when the CFO law first came into effect in California, Royal icing was allowed. And then, for some reason, they decided that it was not safe to have people make and store Royal icing, because it has egg whites in it. So, they changed the wording and when I applied a couple of years later, Royal icing was off the menu. BOOO!!! To this day though, depending on which county you live in, Royal icing is still allowed to use, just not in my county.😞

What the hell? That's all I knew and ever worked with! And now you're saying I can't use it anymore??? I had about 3 months to research and test out cookie icing that is NOT made with egg whites, before I would turn in my application. Believe me, back in good old 2015, that was not an easy task! I didn't belong to any cookie groups on Facebook, nor could I find any YouTube videos about icing without egg whites. Heck, I didn't even know it was called Glaze!

Then I literally stumbled upon Cookie Crazie's blog and learned that you CAN actually ice your cookies with something other than Royal icing. And that's when I learned that there is such a thing called Glaze icing, or Corn syrup Glaze as some call it.

I HAD TO TRY IT!

My first decorating attempts were a failure, I didn't even take any pictures of them. But I wasn't discouraged by it, because after the first bite into my glazed cookie I was converted! Glaze is soft, and buttery, and nothing I had ever tasted before! It. Was. DELICIOUS!

But boy did I realize quickly, that working with Glaze was NOTHING like working Royal! Forget everything you've ever learned about cookie decorating with Royal!

First of all, it is much denser. When you hold a bag of Royal in one hand and the same amount of Glaze in the other, you can definitely tell by its weight, which one is which. It makes sense, because you're not whipping any egg whites to make the icing fluffy.

Second, if it is thick consistency, you will give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome, trying to squeeze out icing from a tiny hole. Don't do that!

Third, it takes sooooooo loooooooong to dry! Give a fully glazed cookie a good 24 hours to dry, otherwise this will happen to them when you stack them

(one of my first glazing attempts May 2015)

Glaze IS stackable and you CAN bag them, but only after it had ample time to dry! Clearly, I did not wait long enough with these.

Fourth, it is impossible to make roses/flowers and write with straight up Glaze the way you can with Royal. Why? Because of the lack of egg whites whipped into the icing, which gives it that stability it needs to hold its shape.

This is the part that holds many cookie decorators back from using Glaze. It is super hard to get good dimensions with Glaze. Yes, you can layer it, but it is really hard to nearly impossible to write nicely or add any kind of embellishments (made with Glaze) to your cookies. I say "nearly impossible". There is a way, but more on that in a future post.

If you want to see some beautifully decorated cookies, I recommend you visit Cookie Crazie's blog. She talks a lot about how to layer Glaze and also has a great many other techniques to make your cookies look unique and beautiful.

But I'm not Cookie Crazie. I'm Busy B Cookies! I didn't want to make cookies that look the same as hers! Plus, a lot of people just really like the look of Royal iced cookies. Period. I mean how can I blame them? We all love our bubble free, crater free, unblemished icing finish, but that's just not feasible when working with Glaze. I tried and tried and almost drove myself crazy, because no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get a smooth finish. It always had bubbles, or the icing would crater (a nemesis in both icing worlds, true, but even more so in the Glaze world, trust me! Ugh!)

If I wanted a smooth finish, it almost only seemed possible only when using thick consistency. But that almost killed my hands and so I knew I couldn't sustain it for very long. For the first time in my short cookie decorating career, I felt defeated. I was frustrated and angry and just didn't think I could do it. Plus, I really missed the ease of Royal and the predictability of it. Glaze is like the hotheaded, moody teenager of the family, whereas Royal is the mellow, "been there-done that", 30 year old. Or something like that.

I tried to work with it, I really did. But I just couldn't get the good old Royal icing days out of my head. And so I decided it was time to give the commercial route a go. Free of restrictions and don'ts of the CFO world, I thought I was going to be happier. I found a small commercial kitchen, relatively close to my house, that I could rent by the hour, after hours. And so I jumped at it.

It was a whole new ball game, let me tell ya! Now we're not fooling around anymore. Now we're bringing out the big guns! Now we're cooking with gas!

For a very short time, I was happy. I really was! I was blinded by the commercial "bling"; the big walk in fridge, the Hobart mixer, the convection ovens, the space! It was a dream come true! I didn't exactly go back to Royal though. I had fallen in love with Glaze, there was absolutely no doubt about that. And so I reverted to the next best thing: Frankenfrosting, or as we call it now Sweet Hope Icing, made popular by a fellow cookier and personal friend Anita of Baking Sweet Hope. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is the perfect blend of Glaze and Royal, mixed together to become an icing that is slightly softer to the bite, yet still gives you the stability of Royal.

So here I was, all by myself, after hours, racing against time (and money), decorating my cookies. I was lonely, and found myself not enjoying decorating as much anymore. I felt like my cookie mojo was being sucked right out of me, because now I HAD to make money, to at least make my monthly rent. I thought it would answer all my icing woes, but instead, I had created a whole new nemesis. Time. Time was always against me. I just wasn't fast enough, baking, decorating, packaging, labeling....the whole thing got to me. I started to resent "going to work", because that's what it now turned into. Work.I wasn't creating anymore, I was producing, and I hated it.

So after a short 9 month stint in the commercial world, I cut my losses, hung my head in defeat and moved out of the kitchen and back home again. And the moment I did that, my spirits lifted again and I knew I had made the right decision! I felt so liberated!

But with my new found liberation also came the realization, that I HAD to make Glaze icing work! So back I went, to the Department of Environmental Health and tried to have Every. Single. Product. I. Could. Find. approved to make my icing stable enough to pipe letters and flowers.

All of them got shot down:

• Aquafaba (also known as vegan Royal icing made of Chickpea brine)=NOPE
• Agar Agar = NOPE
• Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum = NOPE
• Gelatin = NOPE
• Egg replacer = NOPE
• ZIP, NADA, ZILCH. Nothing got approved. Except, Powdered sugar, water, light corn syrup and flavoring, and food colors.

I decided that if worst came to worst, I should have at least butter cream on my list as well. American butter cream, that is, not Swiss Meringue, because that's also made with egg whites. At least I could make some swirl roses with the butter cream. Luckily, my county allows me to use actual butter, and so I did, and got that approved as well.

So here I was, back in my home kitchen, and happy as a clam! I have you know, that I am not one to give up easily, but I know when something is or is not working. I'm not saying don't go the commercial route! Listen, I'm still dreaming of that store front, don't get me wrong! But even if I had a store front and would sell cookies, I would still use Glaze. That's how much I love it. I am a convert. I am a cookie Glazer.

So here we are, at the end of this long first blog post about Glaze, and you're thinking to yourself, "Why in the WORLD is she talking about all this stuff, when the title clearly lets me believe that I will find out what Glaze is???"

Because I need you to understand that, in order to accept Glaze, you will have ups and downs and frustrations and liberations and all the feels in between! Glaze is not easy to work with! Glaze will mess with your mind, make you believe you've figured it out, and then BAM! throw you a curve ball, and make you want to throw it all away and go back to Royal. Because Royal is your safe zone, your mellow, "been there-done that" 30 year old. Don't get me wrong, I loved my 30's! But when it comes to icing for my cookies, I want the green behind the ears, "don't mess with me" attitude icing that keeps me on my toes, and makes me experiment and figure it out, and troubleshoot on a daily basis! And guess what? I've gotten pretty darn good at it, if I may say so myself!

So good in fact, that I decided to create a Facebook group called Strictly Glaze! I realized that there was a huge void in the cookie Glaze world. And there is so much to share! So many questions people have! I also started posting some YouTube videos. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook where I post all my glazed creations.