My love affair with sugar cookies, specifically the iced ones, runs deep. In large part because they allow for endless personalization. Whatever is going on in life, you can come up with a special iced sugar cookie as the ultimate home-baked gift. Birthdays, celebrations, holidays, milestones, literally anything. Blank canvas in cookie form. I also like to bake off batches and mess around with designs the way I might play around in a sketch book – inspired by color, a season, a fabric, an artist. The inspiration here is endless. This is the most recent collection I made, loosely channeling “end of summer” vibes – stripes and sherbet shades. The two components you need to get right are the cookies, and the icing. Here are my thoughts on both before we jump into the recipes down below.
Sugar Cookies: The Foundation
Let’s talk about the foundation to start. You want your cookies to taste good, not just look interesting. So, I’ll start by noting that I’m not in the camp that bakes pale, super blond sugar cookies. I see a lot of them out there. The cookies with little (or no) color baked into them. When you let your cookies get golden at the edges, and when you’ve rolled them out about 1/4-inch thick, you get nice toasted sugar and brown butter notes along with a cookie that has really good structure. Once cooled they’ll give you a bit of snap when you break them, certainly at the edges. I love this. So that’s what I’m going to guide you toward in this recipe. The recipe below leans classic, I also often make a wonderful version using 100% whole wheat you keep whole wheat pastry flour on hand.
Royal Icing: The Flare
Royal icing is a simple mixture of egg white, powdered sugar, a bit of water (or other liquid), and a bit of flare if you like – extracts, etc. It’s sweet, sets up nicely enough that you can draw, paint, and sketch on top of it. You can also embed sugars, sprinkles, and other delights in the icing when it is still wet. I like to use dried egg white powder in place of egg whites for a number of reasons. But primarily because you avoid raw egg when you take this approach. Egg white powder is easy to source and the bag I bought recently won’t expire for over a year.
Sugar Cookies: Ingredients
Let’s talk through a few of the key ingredients here. I have some thoughts!
- Powdered Sugar: I tend to buy organic powdered sugar, it isn’t as bright white, but I don’t mind. While mixing, at first you’ll think, “yikes, this looks a little grey” – don’t worry, it brightens up as you mix. The sugar cookies here are dressed up with royal icing made with organic powdered sugar, so if you’re ok with the whites pictured in these cookies, use them as a reference.
- Egg white powder: Using it eliminates the need to use raw egg whites in the icing. This is the kind I tend to use. It’s a bit spendy, but a little goes a long way. A bag takes while to work through, so once you have a bag, you’ll be set for a good stretch of cookie making. It also keeps, well sealed, for a very long time.
- Decorating: For these cookies I used edible markers to make the stripes and designs. There are lots of them out there in a range of colors. I tend to like to use these colored markers in place of using food dye to color the royal icing, because it has a nice aesthetic and allows you to do fine work and details. Alternately, for coloring batches of royal icing, I’ve been using these natural food colors. I buy them individually (red, blue, yellow) and blend the colors to my liking. Thin your royal icing with more water to achieve a more translucent look.
Sugar Cookies: The Method
Here are some photos that might be helpful as you walk through how to make these cookies. 
Shape and stamp: Once you’ve mixed your cookie dough, let it chill and rest for a few hours, then roll it out. I tend to go 1/4-inch thin, or a shade less. Use whatever you can imaging to stamp your cookies – traditional cookies cutters, by hand with a knife, little cups, etc!
Bake: Here you can see that I like to bake some color into my sugar cookies (above). The flavor is toasty and wonderful. 
Piping Icing: You don’t need to have special pastry gear to decorate cookies. I typically fill a baggie, and snip of the tiniest bit of one corner. It does the job. 
Flood cookies with icing: Pipe a line around the perimeter of each cookie. Fill in the rest, guiding icing into any gaps with a skewer (or something similar). Let the icing set completely, ideally, overnight (see below). You can see this process in the video down below.
Add special designs, patterns, and colors: Now the fun really starts. Customize your cookies using edible ink pens and/or colored royal icing and allow to completely dry.
Video: Decorating Sugar Cookies
More Cookie Recipes
- Chocolate Cookies
- Shortbread
- Whole Wheat Sugar Cookies
- Snickerdoodles
- Triple Ginger Cookies
- David Lebovitz’s Great Chocolate Chip Cookies
- The World’s Best Cookies
- all cookie recipes
Continue reading Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing on 101 Cookbooks
