Favorite Sugar Cookie (for cut out cookies) and Icing recipe

Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies

★★★★★
Cookies and bars, Dessert
Prep Time: 30 mins Cook Time: 7 mins Difficulty: Easy Servings: 40 cookies Source: My Collection
INGREDIENTS

3 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 egg
3 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla
Sugar sprinkles
DIRECTIONS

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
Cut in butter until crumbly.
Add egg, water and vanilla and mix well.
Shape into a log or disk
Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll out dough, cut into shapes, sprinkle with sugar

Bake at 400° 7-8 minutes until lightly brown.


I think the key is to make sure it’s cool/cold when you roll it out and cut the shapes so it won’t spread. We use this every Christmas. Omit sprinkles/sugar if you are going to decorate them after they are baked.

I started using the cookie and icing recipe at Bake@350. Years ago Pioneer Woman (before she was on Food Network and only had her blog) she had her at the lodge giving lessons and I was hooked.

www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/cooking-tips-tutorials/a9766/decorated-christmas-cookies/

This one is my fav for Christmas cookies. I like them thicker and they keep their shape without issues.

This is the one I use too. Before you mix it up don’t let the butter get totally soft, just soft enough to press a finger into. You want it to still be somewhat cool when you start and use cold eggs to help keep your cookies from spreading.

Most of the royal icing recipes are pretty similar, you can also frost them with a glaze icing or even a crusting buttercream which many people seem to prefer. If you do want royal icing, I’ll second using Genie’s Dream or Bakety Bake’s Royal Batch meringue powder. Either one of those is going to taste leagues better than Wilton which IMO is nasty. If the recipe you use calls for cream of tartar, check to make sure your meringue powder doesn’t already contain it. Adding it in addition to meringue powder that already includes it will make your icing taste weird.

My tips for decorating would be to start watching some well known decorators on YouTube. It’s so much easier to learn when you can see what the person is doing vs. someone trying to just describe it on here. Getting the icing consistency right is the hardest thing to learn and will take some time to master so don’t expect your cookies to look perfect right out of the gate. The important thing is that they taste great and you have fun with it.

I clicked on the Cookie Thing's links on MANY blogs and they all come up no such site. They are probably out of business being that most of the blog postings about it are from 2013. Do you know a place to get it or something like it? It would make a great Christmas gift!

I've tested and tried many, many sugar cookie recipes. This is the best, imo. It's from Mary Engelbreit's baking cookbook. It's simple and terrific.

Sugar Cookie Cut-Outs Recipe
Yields: 3 1/2 Dozen

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup ( 2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

1.In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

2. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Then, beat in the eggs and vanilla. On low speed, gradually beat in the flour mixture.

3. Divide the dough into thirds and shape each piece into a disk. Wrap the disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

5. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough about 1/8 inch thick. Cut out the shapes with cookie cutters.

6. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the edges begin to brown.

You could try the Precision rolling pin from Cookie Countess. It isn’t cheap but it’s worth every penny! My only regret is not buying one sooner. I have the 5/16” thickness pin because I think 1/4” cookies are too thin and 3/8” is too thick, IMO. I had a Joseph Joseph pin and I really didn’t like the fact that it had no handles, plus one of the plastic ends that the guides screw into fell out and I couldn’t get it to stay in even after trying a couple different kinds of glue.

I believe Cookie Countess is closed until Black Friday though because they’re getting ready for a big sale. I wish you would have asked last week because they literally just had the rolling pins on sale and they won’t be included in the upcoming BF sale. 

www.thecookiecountess.com/collections/cookie-countess-precision-rolling-pin

i have never had any etching of his name on the dough.  i roll my dough between two pieces of parchment paper so the sides are smooth and the dough will not stick to the rolling pin itself.  nope, never had it happen. 

My royal icing gets hard enough to package and stack but still has a soft bite because I add about a tablespoon of corn syrup to it in the final stage of mixing. It also helps give my cookies a nice shine when they’re dry. 

It’s printed on the bag that Genie’s Dream meringue powder comes in.

I also add a couple generous squirts of white gel color to my base icing when I add the corn syrup at the end. This seems to help a lot to prevent color bleed.

The big tips with royal icing are: 1) be careful not to overmix it, doing that will make the egg whites in the meringue powder break down and then your icing will never dry. 2) Be careful not to add too much gel color to your icing because that will also make your icing not set up or get dry. Add it a little at a time. 3) Dark colors tend to need time to develop so it’s best to start them well in advance of when you need them. I start my red, black and other dark colors at least a day or two prior to when I’ll need them to be on the safe side.

Hmm weird! I usually let my mixer go until it is pulling all the bits off the bottom of the bowl and is mostly a solid ball. Sometimes I work it together by hand if I’ve multiplied the recipe and filled the bowl too full. But I’ve never not had it come together.

This is a good icing recipe that dries to a nice shine, and you can stack the cookies once dry. Also, no meringue powder or cream of tartar needed. 

2 cups powdered sugar 
4 tsps milk
4 tsps light corn syrup 
1/2 tsp. almond or vanilla extract 

Or maybe forgot the egg? Definitely sounds like something is missing or the flour wasn’t measured correctly. The dough should clump around the paddle of the mixer and be about the texture of play doh where you can pinch it and it doesn’t stick to your fingers.