Best Decorated Sugar Cookies Recipes

DECORATED EASTER EGG SUGAR COOKIES

Steps:

• Heat oven to 375°F. In medium bowl, stir cookie mix, flour, melted butter and egg until soft dough forms.
• On floured surface, roll dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut with 3- to 3 1/4-inch egg-shaped cookie cutter; place cutouts 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
• Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 20 minutes.
• In 3 separate small bowls, divide frosting and tint two of them separately with pink and yellow food colors, leaving the third bowl white. With small icing knife or offset metal spatula, spread 1 tablespoon of frosting on top of cookie.
• Using photo as a guide, decorate frosted cookie with cookie icing, sprinkles and sugars. Repeat for frosting and decorating remaining cookies. Let stand about 1 hour or until icing is set. Store covered in airtight container at room temperature with waxed paper between layers.

DECORATED SUGAR COOKIES

Steps:

• Painted Royal Icing Cookies: Bake a couple of extra practice cookies from the scraps of dough to test paint colors and techniques on.
• Use a pastry bag with a small round tip or a zip top bag with a corner snipped off to outline and then cover the cookie with royal icing. Allow royal icing covered cookies to dry 24 hours before painting.
• For painting the background of the cookies, dilute food colors with water until desired color is achieved. (Test color on one of your practice cookies.)
• To add outlines and details, use concentrated food color or edible food color pens.
• While the "paint" is still wet, sprinkle with edible glitter to add an extra sparkle to your cookies.
• Candy Melts Molded Cookies: You can use either heat resistant or non-heat resistant molds for these cookies. Heat resistant molds can filled with the cookie dough and baked in the oven. Non-heat resistant molds can be used to mold the cookie dough only. If you are using non-heat resistant molds, make sure you are using cookie dough that won't spread too much in the oven.
• Paint melted candy melts into the details of the mold. Allow the detailed areas to harden. Fill in the mold with a background color, making sure that you can't see through the mold when you hold it up to a light. Be careful not to overfill the mold with the candy melts. If you fill the mold completely, the candy top will not fit snugly against the cookie base. Place the filled molds in the freezer until the candy is cold. Remove the molds from the freezer and carefully release the candy. Secure the top to the cookie with a dab of melted candy melts.
• Luster dust brushed on the candy tops adds a beautiful sheen to your cookies.
• Tinted Royal Icing Cookies: Outline the area of the cookie to be covered using a pastry bag with a small round tip or a zip top bag with the corner snipped off and quickly fill-in the center of the cookie with royal icing.
• When icing sets, outline and fill-in adjoining areas with additional colors of royal icing.
• Details can be piped on in complementary or contrasting colors of royal icing after the base color has hardened.
• Fondant Molded Cookies: You can use either heat resistant or non-heat resistant molds for these cookies. Heat resistant molds can filled with the cookie dough and baked in the oven. Non-heat resistant molds can be used to mold the cookie dough only. If you are using non-heat resistant molds, make sure you are using cookie dough that won't spread too much in the oven.
• Using the same molds you used to bake the cookies to decorate these cookies. Lightly dust the mold with powdered sugar and press fondant into the molds. Using a small offset spatula carefully remove the fondant. Secure the fondant to the cookie using a small bit of buttercream icing.
• You can create detail in the fondant covered cookies by using different colors. Press small bits of fondant into the details of the mold you want to highlight and then fill in with a background color.
• Luster dust applied to the fondant adds an extra special sparkle to your cookies.
• The fondant can be painted with food coloring or with edible food color pens to add extra details to the cookies.

TRADITIONAL DECORATED SUGAR COOKIES

Steps:

• Cream Crisco & sugar, add eggs one at a time. Add extracts, salt, & baking powder. Add whole wheat white flour then all purpose,one cup at a time. Mix until dough comes together & cleans the sides of the bowl. Chill.
• I use silicone mats in my half sheet baking pans. I roll out my dough on the mat sprinkled w/ powdered sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Cool on wire racks and decorate. You can literally make cookies for anything your imagination dreams up.
• This is a basic dough that can be adapted to make all kinds of cookies, like pecan sandies, or chocolate sugar cookies just by adding a few ingredients. This is also a large batch recipe & yields 5-6 dozen cookies.

SUGAR COOKIES DECORATED WITH ROYAL ICING

Steps:

• Cream together butter and sugar. Add baking powder and salt; combine. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat until combined. Gradually add flour; if dough becomes too stiff for your mixer to tolerate, you may need to add the last bit of flour in by hand.
• Separate dough into two disks; wrap each disk in saran wrap and chill for 2 hours.
• After chilling, preheat oven to 375. On floured surface, roll out one disk of dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Place cookies about 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheet and bake for about 7 minutes or until the edges are just very slightly browned. Move to wire rack and cool completely.
• When cookies cool, make Royal Icing: In mixer beat egg whites on high for about 6-8 minutes until egg whites form thick peaks. It is critical for you to be certain to beat the eggs long enough in order for this recipe to work. Beat in lemon extract. Stir in 4 cups of powdered sugar (by hand) and then, once mostly incorporated, beat on high until thickened. You may add additional powdered sugar for thicker results. Separate out small amounts of the frosting and color with food color as desired. Put frosting into sandwich baggies or piping bags, cut off very small piece of lower corner of bag and squeeze frosting out onto cookie to decorate. Tip: This frosting hardens fairly quickly once it is on the cookie, so I recommend icing about 10 cookies with the white frosting at a time until you've iced all of them; then go back and decorate with the colored frosting. Royal Icing recipe is from Allrecipes.com