Sunday Sweet {Iced Sugar Cookie Recipe from the Archives}

I’ve been making these sugar cookies since the boys were born. They are a labor of love, but are truly the most delicious iced sugar cookies I’ve ever had. If you love almond flavoring, don’t lose this recipe!

Mother and I made them for John’s grad party. We wanted to include something he’d grown up on, but also something that we could make look really cute and festive to go with the theme. We admittedly ran out of steam at this point in the party planning. So, instead of cute grad hat cutouts, we did simple circles, iced them in white and then drizzled in school colors. They were a huge hit!

Amanda’s Sugar Cookies

• 2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs, room temp
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 6 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

1. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and extracts.
2. Mix dry ingredients separately and add to butter mixture. Mix well.
3. Between two sheets of parchment paper about the size of a cookie sheet, roll out in large pancake shapes between 1/8 to 1/4″ thick. Try to keep the thickness consistent – I like them closer to 1/4″ which also makes cut outs easier to do. I usually need to do 3 sets of these large pancakes – so 6 sheets of parchment in total. As I roll out each one, I slide it onto my cookie sheet. Add the next two pancakes on top in a stack. Put in the fridge for 3 hours, or overnight. I usually do overnight.
4. Preheat oven to 350 for 30 minutes.
5. Working with one pancake at a time, remove the top sheet of parchment. Use your cookie cutters to cut dough into shapes. I typically use large 4-6″ cookie cutters with this recipe. You can dip the cutter in powdered sugar if the dough is sticking.
6. Bake on parchment lined baking sheet for 8-10 minutes or until just beginning to brown at the edges. I use the top sheet of parchment I just pulled off of the pancake. I do thicker cookies and larger cutters, so I usually need at least 11 minutes. Watch your first batch closely to determine how long you need for subsequent batches.
7. Once you’ve made it through 1-2 of your pancakes, use the dough remnants to combine into a ball and then flatten out into a new pancake between 2 pieces of your parchment. Put in the fridge for as long as you can. As you go through this process, the dough will not be getting super cold, so it may spread more than your first few batches. I don’t have the patience to wait hours on end, so I just go with it. This recipe can make up to 5 dozen large cookies, but less if you are making thicker cookies.

Amanda’s Royal Icing

• 3 lbs powdered sugar
• 4 heaping Tbsp meringue powder
• 3/4 tsp clear vanilla
• 3/4 tsp butter flavoring
• 1 tsp almond extract

1. Put 2 lbs powdered sugar in your mixing bowl. I use a kitchen scale to get it right. Add the meringue powder. Thoroughly mix the two.
2. Add approximately 1/2 cup warm water or just enough so the frosting is fairly thin.
3. Add the flavorings.
4. Add the last pound of powdered sugar and enough water to make the frosting the consistency you want.

Tips:

• I start with a thicker icing to outline my cookies. Then, I divide it into smaller bowls based on how many colors I need. For this, I left about half white / uncolored. Then 1/4 red and 1/4 blue.
• Once colored, I use squeeze bottles to hold the icing. I outline everything with the thicker icing. In this case, I was only outlining with white.
• Once outlined, I add a tiny bit of warm water to each bottle to get a “Flow consistency” for the icing. I typically just stick a knife down in the bottle to stir it up. In this case, I was only needing the white in flow consistency.
• Now, I flood the white icing inside of my hardened white outline. Use a little butter knife to spread it around.
• Once dried, I drizzled with the thicker red and blue colored icing.
• This icing hardens quickly, so keep it covered or sealed in your squeeze bottles when not in use.

Other icing tools:

• Squeeze bottles
• Gel food coloring

I cannot believe I’ve never shared this recipe! I first made them when John was a newborn!

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