Perfection is in the icing

Yum....

Pumpkin cookies are one of my favorite fall treats, and the best part is the icing! I make mine with my aunt's penuche frosting recipe, and it can get quite messy.

When I made this batch of cookies last week, I remembered how much trouble I had spreading the icing on the cookies when I made them last, so I thought ahead this time and achieved great success!

Here is the original frosting recipe:

Penuche Frosting

3 T melted butter (remember to melt it, otherwise you get butter chunks, not appealing!)
1/2 C brown sugar
1/4 milk
Powdered confectioner's sugar to make it spreadable (about 2 cups)

Combine butter and sugar. Whisk in milk. Add powdered sugar until you achieve spreadable consistency.


My big change isn't really big at all, I simply don't put as much powdered sugar to make it "spreadable." I leave the frosting a little runny so I can dip my cookies, rather than struggle with spreading the icing.

You simply dunk the cookies in your icing as seen in the photos:

Here is what the cookie looks like if you do the old-fashioned spread with a knife. You can see the icing doesn't spread to the edges and isn't uniform:

And here is the cookie completely covered in ooey frosting goodness! With the dunking method, frosting covers all sides of the cookie much more evenly.

My icing has remained a little gooey rather than being slightly hardened like I remember. That might be because I'm in the humid south now rather than the Midwest, or it might be from less powdered sugar. I've remedied that by placing the cookies in the fridge.

Here is another before and after shot. The lighting is a little off, I apologize.

Now all my cookies are frosted and ready to eat. Don't they look so pretty!