Storing Cookies While Decorating

When I began decorating cookies I used royal icing. I loved it and I still love it to this day. I love the taste and the texture of it.

It wasn't until later that I discovered there are people that don't like royal icing because they say it's rock hard and they also don't like the taste. They prefer to decorate with glaze or with a mixture of the two.

My cookies do have a slight crunch when you first bite the cookie but underneath that crunch is softness. In my experience I have never had anyone tell me that my cookies are too hard. I use Sweet Sugarbelle's recipe for my cookies. The cookie has a soft, almost cake like texture to it. This could be one factor that helps the cookie stay soft. Another factor could be that I use a little bit of corn syrup in my royal icing. I currently use a recipe I adapted from Ali Bee's royal icing. 

What I believe also helps a lot is how cookies are stored. I keep my cookies stored in airtight containers throughout the decorating process. After a step has dried I will close my cookies up unless I'm moving on to another step.

There are a lot of factors involved in drying times like how runny your icing is, the weather and the temperature in your house. I cannot give you specific times of when your cookies will be dry but do not store your cookies until you're sure they are dry.

Since I work full-time I usually do a lot of my decorating at night or on the weekends. An example of the decorating process for me will be to outline and flood my cookies. I allow the cookies to dry for 8-10 hours or overnight. If I'm in a hurry, which is almost always, I will use a fan to speed up the process {a tip I learned from Sweet Sugarbelle here}. If I'm working the next day I will cover up my cookies in the morning. This helps then stay fresh and moist until I'm ready to work on the them again. The process repeats depending on how many steps are involved.

Let's talk about the different kinds of containers I use. First up are these 1/4 sheet pan covers. I don't recall where I heard about these first but I'm pretty sure it was from Sweet Sugarbelle. Do you sense a pattern here? What can I say? The girl has crazy good ideas and tips.

I bought mine at a local restaurant supply store but you can find some here. They snap onto the 1/4 sheet pans and work great to keep your cookies fresh and moist. I still use these now and then but mostly they are just sitting on my baker's rack. Some of them snap on so good that I have a hard time getting them off because of troubles with my hands. 

This leads me to the next type of storage container I use. Your standard run of the mill plastic storage box. They are also great to store undecorated cookies in while they are waiting to be decorated. When I decorate cookies I like to work on sheet pans so the only downside to using these boxes is that I have to transfer my cookies from the box back to the pan for the next decorating step.

My final and most favorite storage device is the Cupcake Courier. The Cadillac of cupcake carriers. This carrier came into my life after a disastrous mishap happened one day while transporting cupcakes to work for my co-workers birthday. The crappy carrier I owned fell apart as I was taking it out of my car and mostly all the cupcakes were laying on the parking garage floor as I sat there with tears rolling down my cheeks. My wonderful and caring husband went online and did research and ordered this for me to make sure I had something sturdy for transporting cupcakes. One day I saw that my friend Melissa, The Baked Equation, was using them for her cookies and I've been using mine for that ever since.

I put some parchment paper on each layer to keep the cookies from going through. I'm looking for plastic mats or something more permanent that will fit in there. If you use this and have ideas let me know.

What's great is that I can put the whole tray on a sheet pan on my baker's rack. Then when I'm ready to store them I put all the trays back in the carrier and close it up. 

Depending on the size of the cookie each tray can hold anywhere from 6-12 cookies. This is a pricey carrier but I have seen them on occasion at Home Goods for $19.99. I wish I had grabbed another one when I last saw them because it's been awhile since I've seen one there.

I hope you liked taking a look at how I store my cookies. If you're looking to keep your cookies fresh and moist don't leave them out longer than they need to be.

Happy decorating!