Royal Icing Temple Cookies

I'm a serious home baker, but I recorded this video the second time I used royal icing to decorate sugar cookies. The icing was a bit thicker than ideal, but I decided to post this anyway, because I thought it might be encouraging to those even newer to this process to see that the process doesn't need to be perfect to be perfectly beautiful.

Make Sugar Cookies

I used Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe from Food Network. There are several videos as well as the recipe at that link. (I also made a batch of chocolate sugar cookies, but I lost that link. Sorry.)
Then roll the dough between two layers of parchment paper (divide the dough in half and do this twice), slide it onto a cookie sheet or cutting board, and refrigerate until firm, which will be in about 45 minutes.

When the dough is firm, peel back the top layer of parchment paper, dip your cutter in flour, and cut your first shape. While the cutter is still on the dough, slide a floured metal spatula under the dough and cutter, and transfer them together to a cookie sheet. This helps the cookies keep their shape better.

Put the cookies (with tented spires, see below) in the oven for the minimum bake time. Then remove the foil. Leave in the oven for up to a few more minutes, or until the edges of the cookies blush golden brown.

Make Royal Icing and Decorate

Make sure you have meringue powder and icing bags, couplers, and tips available!
Wilton's royal icing recipe can be found here.  Use the "thin icing" variation. Divide the icing among several cups. Cover the cups with a wet paper towel. One at a time, remove a cup from under the wet paper towel and add gel colors. Transfer into an icing bag with a coupler already in place.

 Use a small tip to outline your cookies (like a #1 or #3), and a slightly bigger tip for flooding them with icing (like a #3 or #5). Have fun with this!
I did a blue temple, then added yellow polka dots, and a blue CTR shield, then added yellow letters. If the icing is the right consistency, everything "melts" to the same level. It's part of the magic of royal icing.

Here, I did colorful diagonal stripes. Then I ran a toothpick through the stripes, but only in one direction:

This temple got a solid yellow background, large round white dots with little yellow dots in the middle. I pulled a toothpick from the center of the small dots outward, which gave a sunburst effect. (The lumps are from the icing being not quite thin enough.)

Then my daughter came home:

The cookies are supposed to air-dry for 24 hours before being stacked. That's the professional ideal. At the very least, don't stack them within the same couple of hours as when you decorate them, and then proceed with caution.
We served these as refreshments for our ward's Temple and Priesthood Preparation (Primary) meeting. I show a few more cookies in the video.