Emoji Cookies by Brooke

Brooke has a project coming up for school in a couple weeks and asked if I would practice it with her beforehand to make sure she could do it - I said sure, what's the project? Turns out it's making and decorating cookies to look like emoji's, yay! (I was worried it was going to be math or something I might not be able to help with hahaha, thank goodness it's baking and frosting!). We made sugar cookies following the directions on a bag of Betty Crocker mix - roll the cookies out on a floured surface and cut into small round circles. We used a 3" cookie cutter which I thought was a little big but that's what she wanted. In order to make the emoji faces smooth and harden so they won't get smooshed we made royal icing instead of buttercream - buttercream tastes better but royal icing is the way to go if you want a smooth, hard surface for decorating.

Royal Icing:
3 cups powdered sugar
2 egg whites (note: if you don't want to eat raw egg whites then substitute them with meringue powder)
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Beat for about 5 minutes until smooth - the consistency should be thin enough to spread easily and almost puddle so you don't see lines in the icing, but not so thin it runs off the cookie. Add a touch of lemon juice if you need it a little thinner.

This recipe made just enough to frost and decorate one bag of sugar cookie mix, she got 15 big ones.