Decorated Sugar Cookies

Last week my daughter and I made decorated sugar cookies.  They were her choice.  We were baking cookies for the bake sale I hosted for our girls’ groups at church, and I let her choose what she wanted to make.

These cookies look a bit tedious, and well, to be honest, they are.  However, they are not that difficult to make with some guidance and patience.  You just need a good dose of time on your hands.

First make the dough.  That step isn’t too hard, but you have to let it chill an hour or so before working with it to make the shapes.  There are a slew of recipes all over the internet for sugar cookie dough.  Here’s the one I used.

After chilling the dough, you can use your cutters to create the shapes you want and bake the cookies.

Once the cookies are cool you can decorate them.

We used Alton Brown’s Royal Icing.  We followed the directions and then put most of the icing in a plastic bag to pipe it.  (You can always use a plastic bag rather than a piping bag.  Just cut a TINY bit off one corner.  You can always cut more, so be careful at first.  You will pipe the frosting out of that hole you just made.)

You also want to put some of the frosting in a bowl and thin it with some water until it pours off the spoon.  You will use this to flood your cookies.

You can tint your frosting with food coloring, if you desire.

First, outline your cookies by piping some frosting along the edge.

Next flood the cookies with some of the thin icing and spread it around with a toothpick.  If you have a plastic squeeze bottle, this would be a great time to use it!

Decorate the icing with sugars, sparkles, and pearls!  It will dry over a short period of time, so you want to make sure you finish decorating your cookies while the icing is still wet.

Be festive, have fun, and enjoy!