Decorated Snowflake Cookies!

It's winter.  Don't let the next cookies you make be for Valentine's Day.  Decorated snowflake cookies are winter show-stoppers that are easy to make with one icing color—white. 

If you can make straight lines and add little silver shiny edible dragees for decoration, these cookies will be the talk of the New Year's party or for any hostess gift this season.

Snowflake cookies cutters might even be on sale now.

See the photos for a pictorial tutorial on decorating the cookies.

You will need:

The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe (recipe below)

Royal Icing Recipe (recipe below)

Decorating bag (disposible or regular)

#2 decorating tip and coupler to hold tip if using the decorating bag

Silver candy decorating dragees

The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe

3 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 375.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.
Slowly mix in dry ingredients until just blended.
Divide the dough into 2 flattened rounds and wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper.
Placed the wrapped rounds in a plastic bag and chill until hardened, about 1 hour.

Roll dough on a lightly floured board to 1/8 inch to 1/4" (1/4" is my preference) and cut with the cookie cutter of your choice. Bake in the top 1/3 of oven 10-12 minutes.

For softer cookies (not recommended for iced cookies), roll a little thicker.

Cookie Dough Tips:
- Sweep and level dry ingredients. I fluff the flour with a fork, scoop the cup into the flour container and level off with a straight edge.
- Use regular table salt in baking and not a coarse grain salt like Kosher which will not dissolve well into the dough.
- Sometimes I will use the Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste instead of the N/M vanilla extract. The paste and extract are interchangeable in measuring amounts.

If you'd like to read a tutorial I wrote of how to make the dough and roll out cookies, click HERE.

Royal Icing Recipe:

1 lb. Powdered Sugar (does not need to be sifted)
3 Tbl. Meringue Powder
6 Tbl. Hot Water (from tap is fine)

Make sure your bowl and whisk attachment is grease free.
Why grease free? Grease and egg whites don't mix and the whites will not rise. Give both a pre-wash if they've been sitting unused in your kitchen for awhile.

With a whisk attachment beat all the ingredients on high until fluffy.
Do not under beat. I mix for at least 8 minutes.
Put the icing immediately in a container with a tight lid to prevent it from drying out.

Big Icing Tip:

The icing straight from the mixing bowl is fine for outlining a cookie but for filling in or flooding a cookie, as it's called, you need a thinner consistency.

"Count to 10 For The Perfect Flooding Consistency"

To get the nice smooth icing you see on the cookies it needs to be thinned. Too thin and it runs down the sides of the cookies and will not coat it well. Too thick and it will just sit there and not be smooth.

Here's how to get the perfect consistency:

Add water a teaspoon at a time for small amounts. Mix it well into the icing. Now pull up a dollop of icing on your spoon or spatula and let it drop back down into the bowl. Count to 10. If the dollop seems to melt and disappears back into the icing by the count of 10, it will be the perfect consistency for flooding or filling in the cookie. If you can still see remnants of the dollop add a few drops more water. If it melts back in too quickly then you need to add more regular icing to give it more body.

If you'd like to read a tutorial I wrote with more tips when using royal icing, click HERE.

Happy snow days this winter!