Buttery, soft and thick Christmas Sugar Cookies with flat tops and lots of room for icing and decorations. Made with simple ingredients, these cookies hold their shape well after baking and it is a no chill cookie recipe.
Christmas is incomplete without sugar cookies, no? It easily becomes a family affair as kids help in cutting out the cookies and then are very excited to decorate them.
If you aren't a fan of decorating cookies, they taste just as good plain, just like this Chocolate Shortbread Cookie Recipe and these Raspberry Thumbprints. Do check out all other Holiday Favorite Cookies on greedy eats. You will love them all!
Why you will love these cookies:
- Baked with simple ingredients
- Hold their shape well in the oven
- Beginner friendly recipe
- Bakes thick and has a lot of room for icing/frosting
- No need to chill the dough before baking
Ingredients and substitutions for this recipe:
Butter: Using butter at room temperature is crucial when making sugar cookies, but make sure that the butter is not greasy or too melty. You want to begin with soft yet firm butter. Even salted butter can be used here. If you take this route make sure to keep additional salt in check.
Sugar: You will need granulated sugar to sweeten these cookies. These cookies are not too sweet. So I do not recommend reducing the amount of sugar from the recipe.
Egg: You will need two eggs at room temperature for this dough. Make sure they are at room temperature. In case you forget to take out eggs out of refrigerator, you can keep them in warm water for about 5 minutes to warm them up.
Flour: All purpose flour is the base of this cookie. I don't add extra flour while rolling this dough as it tends to dry the cookies out. Instead of flour use two parchment papers to roll the dough in.
Flavorings: You can't miss to add some vanilla in this cookie dough of course. But you can definitely add more flavors to lift the flavor profile of these cookies. I have added half a teaspoon of almond extract in todays cookies. You can also opt for cinnamon, peppermint or even maple to celebrate the flavors of Holidays!
How do these cookies come together:
Creaming: Creaming is typically the most important part of making these cookies. If your butter and sugar are creamed well and then eggs are well incorporated in the dough, you have already won 90% of this cookie battle. Creaming butter and sugar for good 3-4 minutes and then cream eggs in the dough for 2-3 minutes again for perfect textured cookies. By perfect texture I mean cookies that are not too fluffy and are not too stodgy either.
Bringing the dough together: Next yo will add in the flavorings, salt and flour in 3-4 additions. Whisk only till you see all the flour has disappeared into the dough.
Divide the dough into four parts: This is a big batch dough. Dividing it into 3-4 parts help with the rolling process. This way you won't keep re-rolling the same dough again and again either. Just roll one part once, cut out the cookies, collect the scrapes and combine all the scrapes together in the last and roll it then.
Cut out the patterns of your choice: Now here comes the fun part. Kids at home can get involved in this activity and can have loads of fun. You can cut these cookies into any shapes and sizes that you'd like. Just remember that the thickness and size of your cut out cookies will decide their baking time. If you are using large cookie cutters like I did, your cookies will need around 9-10 minutes in the oven.
Bake, Cool down and decorate: Once the cookies are baked allow them to cool down completely before you attempt to ice them. You can also chill your cookie in refrigerator or in the freezer to aid faster cooling. Just keep them in the fridge/freezer for only 10-15 minutes. Any more time in there can dry them out.
Tips to create perfect Sugar Cookies every single time:
- Number one point to keep in mind is you will need butter at room temperature, but not butter that has turned greasy or has melted way too much. To test, when pressed with thumb/finger the stick of butter will get an indentation mark. But the stick won't feel greasy. If you notice the butter feels too greasy, either use another stick for the cookie dough, or place this butter back in the refrigerator to set up.
- Secondly, make use of a stand mixer to make this cookie dough. Stand mixer is bigger in size than a handheld mixer and is super convenient to handle bigger batch of dough. Even though a hand mixer can easily work here. But you will require some arm muscle to cream butter and sugar and then creaming eggs in the dough.
- Don't add additional flout to the cookie dough while rolling or re-rolling it. This extra flour tends to dry your cookies out. Instead roll your dough in between two parchment papers to avoid extra addition of dough.
- Take extra care to keep an eye on the cookies as they bake. There is nothing worse than putting in all the effort and then ending up with dried or burnt cookies in the end.
To avoid such mishaps, set a timer 1-2 minutes prior to the time recipe states. Check your cookies before time to ensure that they don't start to brown or get over baked. Also, most ovens have hot spots. The closer you get to those metal walls, the hotter it gets. To avoid the cookies from burning, rotate them halfway just to be safe. - Never over crowd cookies in the cookie trays or cookie trays in the oven. This little tip goes a long way while baking cookies of any kind. Over crowding the cookies can rob them of their space to expand and bake. Similarly, when you over crowd cookie trays in the oven, they don't bake uniformly. If you aren't pressed on time I suggest no more than 2 trays at a time.
- Never be tempted to over whip your royal icing. It will only create extra air bubbles in the icing, that you absolutely don't need.
Royal Icing:
This recipe for making royal icing is an easy one. It sets, but doesn't set rock hard. Neither you'd feel that you are eating cement! I make my icing with meringue powder.
Meringue powder replaces egg whites in the royal icing and gives just the same texture and teste is very good too.
It not only sets quickly, but also you will not need consistencies of two kinds for outlining and flooding. This icing is thick enough to create outlining on the cookie and thin enough for flooding.
It needs three simple ingredients and just 2-3 minutes at max to whip it up.
The consistency of this icing should be such- when a drip of icing falls back into the bowl from whisk, it should disappear back into the icing within 7-10 seconds.
Recipe
Christmas Sugar Cookies
Equipment
- 1 Stand mixer
- 2 Cookie trays
- Cookie Cutters of Choice
- 1 Rolling Pin
- few Parchment Paper Sheets
Ingredients
- 2 Cups Butter unsalted, at room temperature
- 2 Cups Granulated sugar
- 2 large Eggs at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons Pure vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon Almond extract
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 4 teaspoons Baking Powder
- 6 Cups All purpose flour
For Royal Icing:
- 4 Cups Confectioners' sugar
- 3 Tablespoons Meringue powder
- 9 Tablespoons Water
Decorations:
- ½ Cup Christmas Sprinkles of choice
- few drops Food Coloring of choice I used gel pink and green food colors
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉ and line two (or as many as you need) cookie trays with parchment paper or silicone mats and set them aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment or using a handheld mixer, beat butter and sugar together on medium-high speed till the mixture gets very pale and fluffy. About 3-5 minutes.
- Next add and mix in vanilla, almond extract and both eggs, one at a time and whisk for good 2-3 minutes again. Now add in salt and baking powder too. Beat again to combine.
- Turn the mixer on low speed and slowly add flour in 3-4 additions. Beat after each addition. Combine only till flour disappears into the dough. The dough must be creamy, yet firm. If you notice that your dough looks crumbly at this stage, you can add up to a tablespoon of milk to get it to a creamy consistency.
- Once the dough is formed divide it into 4 equal parts. You can bake all the cookies right away or you can chill the rest in refrigerator for up to three days. Bring to room temperature before rolling out.The dough can also be frozen into ziploc bags or any freezer safe airtight containers at this point to up to 3 months. Roll out one part at a time between 2 large parchment paper sheets to ⅜ of an inch.
- Cut out chapes with your favorite cookie cutters and line them on pre-lined baking trays. Bake for about 9-10 minutes. This time is for when you are baking large cut out cookies. If you cut them with small cutters, the cookies will get ready within 6 minutes.
- Cookies are done baking when their edges look set and their edges look slightly golden. You don't want to brown those edges and yes, you don't need to chill this dough prior to baking. Allow the cookies to cool in the baking trays for 5-7 minutes and then set them on wire rack to finish off cooling. You can also place them in the refrigerator or freezer for about 10 minutes to quicken the cooling process.
Royal Icing:
- Pour confectioners’ sugar, meringue powder, food coloring and 9 Tablespoons of water into a large mixing bowl. Using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer with whisk attachment whisk these 3 ingredients together on med-high speed for about 2 minutes.If like me you want to tint your cookies into more than one color, make the icing first, divide it into two halves and color it then.
- When you lift the icing up with your whisk, it must drizzle on the rest of the icing and disappear into it in about 7-10 seconds. This is the consistency of the royal icing that you are looking for.
- If you find your icing to be too thick, beat in more water, about a Tablespoon at a time. You'd usually need about 10 Tablespoons of water. But when the days are dry, you might end up using 11-13 Tablespoons of water. The longer you beat the royal icing, the thicker it becomes. If your notice that your royal icing is too thin, just keep beating it for a little longer for it to thicken up or you can add more sifted confectioners’ sugar.
- Draw outlines on the cookies first. Allow it to dry and then flood the cookies with icing. Add sprinkles while the icing is still wet. The icing will dry out completely in about 2 hours. Enjoy!
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