When Mary and I are asked about our all-time favorite desserts to make, decorated sugar cookies are always at the top of our list. Although the cookies themselves are classic sugar cookies (not to downplay how delicious they really are!) the fun comes in the endless possibilities for cookie shapes and decorating styles. In the past, Mary and I have made mostly holiday sugar cookies— whether for Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, or the Fourth of July. Now, our cookie repertoire is expanding as just this past week we purchased some fun new cookie cutters and made some great new designs!
Last Sunday before the Blackhawks game a week ago today, Mary and I thought it would be fun to make some festive cookies to help cheer on our favorite team. Though we weren't ambitious enough to try the Blackhawks logo (too many details!) we did make some jersey cookies that turned out to be so fun and not to mention delicious!
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| We found the t-shirt or jersey cookie cutters at Sur La Table! |
We started by making our favorite sugar cookie dough and leaving it in the refrigerator to cool and harden before rolling it out and cutting the jersey shapes! If you roll the dough out too early after it is finished, it will be very hard to lift the cut shapes onto the baking sheet and will create a big cookie dough mess! By refrigerating the dough you get a cleaner, easier transfer process and cookies with much straighter lines and neater shapes. Making thicker cookies and using colder dough also helps prevent the cookies from spreading and leaves you with nice beautiful cookies with just the right shape!
After baking the cookies and allowing them to cool, we whipped up a batch of our favorite royal icing and began our favorite part—the decorating! Over the years Mary and I have really perfected our cookie decorating process, and are excited to share some of our favorite tips! To ice the cookies, we place the frosting in a clear condiment squeeze bottle. Start by making an outline around the edges of the cookie, leaving a bit of room around the edge so the icing does not spill over the sides!
The next part is where you really get the professional sugar cookie look, using a process called flooding. After squeezing a generous amount of frosting in the center of the cookie, use a small spatula, bamboo skewer, or even a toothpick to help guide the frosting as it flows throughout the whole surface of the cookie! Once the whole cookie is dry, you can draw over the first icing layer using squeeze bottles filled with different colors!
In addition to the Blackhawks jersey cookies, Mary and I were asked to make some shark sugar cookies for an 11 year old's shark-themed birthday party! After finding a shark sugar cookie cutter, which was harder than we thought, we used our favorite cookie recipe again and made some fun shark shaped cookies!
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| We found the shark cutters in a Wilton pack from JoAnn Fabrics! |
For the shark cookies, we found that the tip on the squeeze bottle was a little too large for the finer details such as the shark's teeth, eye, and gills. To make these smaller details, we used a piping bag with a Wilton #2 tip, which worked perfectly to give us just the right sized designs.
Our Favorite Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 1/2 tsp. almond extract
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 1/2 cups sifted flour
- Cream butter
- Add powdered sugar
- Blend in egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt, and flour
- Chill dough until very firm
- Roll to 1/4" thickness on a well-floured surface
- Place on cookie sheets either greased or with baking mat (we use Silpat)
- Bake for 8-10 minutes, cookies should not brown
- Allow to cool completely on cooling rack before decorating
We hope you enjoy this recipe and try your hand at making some beautiful decorated sugar cookies! They may be tedious at times and require a lot of care and love to decorate, but these delicious cookies are definitely worth it!
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