The recipe column is written by Ilora B. and Vivienne H.

Decorated Sugar Cookies

About

 These delicious cookies are a great treat for you and your family. They are very fun and taste great! For these cookies, we recommend having a cookie cutter, but if you don’t, that’s fine. You could always roll the dough into balls or cut shapes out of the dough that you like. For the icing, you can either pipe it on or spread it with a butter knife. The icing dries very quickly, so it would be pretty easy to do additional decorations on your cookie. The sprinkles we added were just for decoration, so they are completely optional. If you want to make your cookies more colorful, you can split your icing into different bowls and then add different food coloring to each bowl so you have a variety of colors. The ingredients in the cookies are probably best not being changed because if the consistency of the dough changes, it will be difficult to roll out the dough. We do not recommend changing the ingredients of the royal icing because if you want the icing to solidify after you decorate it, you shouldn’t change the proportions of the ingredients. Make sure when you roll the dough, it is on a floured surface. People often roll the dough on a counter, but you gotta make sure that the counter is very clean or else your cookies will pick up a lot of dirt. Something we recommend is rolling the dough on a big cutting board if you have one because this way no dirt can get in the dough, and you can save time by not thoroughly cleaning the counter! If you want to completely make sure the cookies don’t spread while baking, you can put the cut out dough into the freezer for 5 minutes before popping them into the oven.

Review

These cookies were very soft and we liked them a lot! The frosting was very easy to handle and it went so well with the cookie! Our families enjoyed these cookies very much and we would definitely make them again.  If you do happen to make these cookies, then make sure to send us a picture publishme@theswerve187.com

Ingredients

Cookie

• 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
• 1½ teaspoon baking powder
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup butter
• ½  cup of sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting

• 1 ¼ cup of confectioners sugar
• 2 egg whites
• ¼ teaspoon of cream of tartar
• Pinch of salt
• Food coloring (if desired)

Directions

• First preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
• Combine your butter and sugar until light and fluffy
• Then, add egg and vanilla extract and mix until fully incorporated
• Combine your dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add that to the wet ingredients mix your dough into fully combined
• On a lightly floured surface roll your dough out to ⅛ or ¼ inch. If you roll out the dough too thick it may spread. If the dough sticks to the rolling pin, lightly sprinkle the top of the dough with flour. 
• Use cookie cutters to cut out cookies, then transfer to the cookie sheet. 
• Bake for 6-8 minutes, and remove from the oven once the edges start to brown.
• Allow cookies to cool for 4-5 minutes, then move to the cooling rack to finish cooling.
• While you cookies are cooling, you can start your icing. Combine the sugar, egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt until the mixture begins to form a stiff peak. Mix in your food coloring if wanted.
• Transfer your frosting to a piping bag and you can put designs on your cooled cookies. You could also simply spread the icing using a spoon or spatula.
• Enjoy your sugar cookies!