Ingredients
Sugar cookie ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3 cups flour
Royal icing ingredients:
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 3 TBSP meringue powder
- 3–5 TBSP warm water
- food coloring
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream butter until smooth, mix in sugar. Then add egg and vanilla. In separate bowl add baking powder, salt and flour then gradually add to mixture a little at a time, mix until well combined.
- You do not need to chill this dough! Just roll out to 1/4 thick. Bake for 6-8 minutes (6 minutes for smaller cookie 8 for the large). Allow cookies to cool for ten minutes then transfer to cooling rack.
- Next you need to make the icing, add dry ingredients in mixer, gradually add water until you get the consisting you are looking for. Mix well until the icing becomes glossy.
- Decorating instructions for winter wonderland cookies. Here is what you will need: Royal Icing light blue (flood fill consistency icing), Royal Icing white (flood fill consistency icing), Royal Icing 2/3 cup white (slightly thicker for piping), Royal Icing 1 cup of light green (slightly thicker for piping), decorator bags, small decorator cycle tip, sprinkles
- When decorating you will want to start with the blue base, using flood fill technique and set aside to let set. Then add white at the base of the cookie. I add sprinkles to that to make it look like snow.
- Pipe on the trees with a circle tip with thicker icing so it stays as you place it on the cookie. Finally, add snowmen also with the circle tip. The key is to wait for each layer to set.
Notes
Tip: Use less water for frosting you will use for piping and more water if you want the frosting to fill in so it is nice and smooth. Make icing slightly thick once you have all the colors divided into bowls, then you can thin out icing by using 1/2 teaspoon water at a time so it will flood fill (when you pipe frosting and it floods and fills in, more about that at the bottom).
Flood fill technique- with a disposable piping bag filled with frosting, snip off end with scissors then create a ring of icing around the outside edge of the cookie, move in a spiral pattern until the frosting reached the center. If at the right consistency the icing will filling by itself and create a smooth and flawless finish.