Sugar Cookies and Icing

These sugar cookies are more like shortbread cookies. They are not very sweet which means sweet icing complements them perfectly. The almond flavor of the cookies and the sugary sweetness of the icing taste very good together.

Supplies:

• Cookie cutters
• #2 metal tip (we use Wilton, sizes vary between brands)
• Various other metal tips (optional, depending on how you want to decorate your cookies)
• Mixer
• Pastry bags and/or squeeze bottles (I would like these and maybe these.)
• Toothpicks and cornstarch*

Sugar Cookie Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 3 tsp. almond extract**
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 5 cups flour, sifted

Directions:

Cream butter. Add powdered sugar. Mix in egg, almond extract, vanilla, and flour. Roll dough into two individual balls and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill dough until stiff (about an hour). Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll dough to 1/4" thickness on a well-floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters. Place on greased cookie sheet or cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (I prefer doing the latter). Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cookies should not brown. Decorate when cool. The number of cookies will vary, depending on the size of your cookie cutters.

Royal Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

• 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 2 Tbsp. meringue powder
• 5 Tbsp. water
• Gel food colors

Directions:

Mix all ingredients on low speed until peaks form. If using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment. This icing is good for piping on the cookies. Store the icing in an airtight container.

We divide the icing into a couple of airtight containers and use the gel food colors to color the icing. We begin by piping the icing on the cookies. Once all the cookies have piping around them, we take some of the icing and thin it in separate containers.*** Place the thinned icing in the squeeze bottles to flood your cookies. Let the cookies dry thoroughly (we leave them overnight), and then decorate as you wish.

*We use toothpicks dipped in cornstarch to move stray piped icing. Clean toothpicks can be used to put a little color in the flooded icing. The toothpicks can be dipped in the gel food color or thinned icing and applied to the flooded icing on the cookie (we did not do that with these cookies).
**Lemon zest, lemon juice, or  lemon extract can be used with equally good results. That being said, my children prefer the taste of the almond cookies.
***Add one teaspoon of water to the icing at a time to thin it. If the icing becomes too thin, add a little powdered sugar.

Enjoy your cookie baking and decorating!