Dehydrator? A dry cookie sounds awful!
If that was your first thought when seeing “dehydrator” as a cookie tool, you are not alone, I had the same thought. It took me a while to get on board with using a dehydrator when decorating but I love it! After lots of research, I found that my concerns were valid, but not going to be much of an issue. Sugar cookies have SO much butter, so drying it out is nearly impossible at the low temps needed for a dehydrator to do its job with the icing. That brings me to the reason cookiers love dehydrators so much, icing! Dehydrators speed up the drying process for royal icing, turning the cookie decorating process into a potentially 3 day process to something that can be accomplished in one day!
Icing is often layered and waiting for royal icing to dry before starting the second layer can take up to 24 hours without additional tools. If you do not wait, you risk a few things, the worst of them being color bleed which is when the color from one layer spreads to another. This often happens when working with highly saturated colors along side lighter tones. Red and white is a risky combo in the cookie world (sorry Mickey mouse fans). I have been a victim of icing bleed many times and I wish I could share pictures of that experience here, but I was careful to avoid evidence of my mistakes at the time. I promise to take pictures of my mistakes (for science) in the future.
Needless to say, when I get an order with red and white, I will accept but usually stress a little extra over how those cookies will turn out. My dehydrator has given me a little more confidence that I can get the colors to work as I want them to. At the time of writing this post, I recently completed an order for a second birthday party with a Cars theme. I made an extra 6 cookies or so in case the icing decided to go wild and was lucky enough to be able to give my customer all of the extras!
Instructions for Use
As for instructions on using the dehydrator, putting the cookies in at the lowest setting for 20-40 minutes does the trick! The lowest setting on my dehydrator is 95 degrees which is pretty standard. The time in the dehydrator may vary based on the climate that you are in, I am in Louisiana which tends to be exceptionally humid (just ask my hair), so a few extra minutes in the dehydrator won’t hurt.
I have not yet done a test with and without, but I have read that placing the cookies on a silicone mat in the dehydrator will prevent your cookie from drying out as the icing is drying. Reading that tid-bit caused me to add silicone mats to my card as quickly as I could but I may do a test on two cookies from the same batch soon to test that theory.
Final Thoughts
Is a dehydrator 100% necessary for any cookie designs? No. BUT if you plan to make lots of cookies and you value your time, a dehydrator could be a great investment! The procrastinator in me is very thankful to have this tool at the ready.
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