Description
Create professional-grade Christmas sugar cookies that hold their shape perfectly and provide a smooth, crisp canvas for intricate royal icing designs. This classic recipe features a delicate, buttery vanilla bean dough and a reliable meringue-based royal icing that hardens to a flawless finish. Ideal for holiday gifting, these cookies remain stable and crisp, ensuring your festive creations look as good as they taste with every melt-in-the-mouth bite.
Ingredients
1 cup Unsalted Butter, softened
1 cup Granulated Sugar
1 Large Egg, room temperature
2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
3 cups All-Purpose Flour, sifted
1 tsp Baking Powder
0.5 tsp Salt
3 tbsp Meringue Powder
4 cups Powdered Sugar, sifted
Water (as needed for icing consistency)
Instructions
Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
Add the egg and vanilla extract, beating until fully incorporated.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture until a dough forms.
Chill the dough thoroughly before rolling out to ensure cookies hold their shape.
Roll dough on a floured surface, cut into festive shapes, and bake at 350F for 12 minutes.
Let cookies cool completely on a wire rack before decorating.
For the icing, whisk the meringue powder and powdered sugar with small amounts of water until desired consistency is achieved.
Decorate the cooled cookies and allow the royal icing to harden fully before storing.
Notes
Use superfine sugar for the dough to achieve a finer texture. Ensure the butter is at room temperature but not melted to prevent spreading. For the icing, use a piping consistency for outlines and a thinner ‘flood’ consistency to fill in the designs. Store finished cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
- Prep Time: 45
- Cook Time: 12
- Category: Baking
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 210
- Sugar: 18g
- Sodium: 85mg
- Fat: 7g
- Saturated Fat: 4.5g
- Carbohydrates: 35g
- Fiber: 0.5g
- Protein: 2g
- Cholesterol: 30mg