This cut out sugar cookie recipe is easy to cut out, holds its shape after baking, and yields soft and chewy sugar cookies.
Cookie Ingredients
1 cup salted butter (2 sticks) cold & cut into chunks
1 cup granulated sugar (or vanilla sugar)
1 egg
3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean scraped (optional)
1/2 tsp pure almond extract
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
- ICING INGREDIENTS
4 cups (480g) confectioners sugar, sifted (I use and recommend Domino brand)
3 tablespoons meringue powder (not plain egg white powder)
9–10 tablespoons room temperature water
optional for decorating: gel food coloring
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream butter and sugar together. Stir in egg, extracts, and vanilla bean. In a small bowl, stir flour and baking powder together. Slowly incorporate dry ingredients.
- Roll the dough out onto the floured surface to be just over 1/4″ thick. Cut cookies out using cookie cutters and place them onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
- Freeze for 5-7 minutes, then bake for 10-12 minutes, or until bottoms have lightly browned but edges are still light in color. Cool for 3 minutes on the baking sheet, then remove to cooling racks. Decorate as desired.
- ICING INSTRUCTIONS
- Pour confectioners sugar, meringue powder, and 9 tablespoons of water into a large bowl.
- Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment beat icing ingredients together on high speed for 1.5-2 minutes. When lifting the whisk up off the icing, the icing should drizzle down and smooth out within 5-10 seconds.
- If it’s too thick, beat in more water 1 tablespoon at a time. It may take up to 12-14 tablespoons. Remember that the longer you beat the royal icing, the thicker it becomes. If your royal icing is too thin, just keep beating it to introduce more air, OR you can add more confectioners sugar.
- When applied to cookies or confections in a thin layer, icing completely dries in about 2 hours at room temperature. If the icing consistency is too thin and runny, it will take longer to dry. If the icing is applied very thickly on cookies, it will also take longer to dry.
- If you’re layering royal icing onto cookies for specific designs and need it to set quickly, place cookies in the refrigerator to help speed it up.
Notes
- When you’re not working directly with the royal icing (for example, you are decorating cookies but you still have some icing left in the bowl that you intend to use next), place a damp paper towel directly on the surface of the royal icing. This prevents it from hardening.
