Christmas Sugar Cookies

Christmas Sugar Cookies

Snowflakes

Close up of some of the Snowflakes

Stars and Snowflakes

Last weekend, I baked 100 Sugar Cookies to give as gifts to my family. I had 3 days off work so I had the time necessary to do this amount. On Saturday, I baked the cookies using the following cutouts: snowman, large and small snowflake, star, christmas stocking, oblong ornament, round ornament, reindeer, and two different christmas trees. Since I only have 1 oven, I had to wait for the cookie sheets trays to cool completely before I could bake more cookies, so it took time but was worth the wait. Once each tray cools, wipe with a paper towel before adding more cutout dough to bake. If you do not wait for the trays to cool, your cookies will spread when baking. After the Sugar Cookies cooled completely, I stacked them and covered with plastic wrap overnight. That was day 1 of baking Sugar Cookies.


Reindeer

Snowmen

On Sunday, I made two types of icing, Royal Icing and a smoother consistency to flood the cookies. I got the recipe from Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/RoyalIcing.html. I used the egg white version since I do not have merengue powder, and have read the latter version does not taste so good. I added a little more lemon juice and clear vanilla extract for the icing I needed to flood the cookies. I used color gel dyes in different colors and did the borders with a pastry bag and tip #2. Place your pastry bag in a glass lined with a piece of paper towel and use a clip or rubber band to seal the top otherwise you will have a mess. I recommend squeeze bottles if you have them. Next year, I will use squeeze bottles as well. I did not order them in time. Let the borders dry completely before flooding each cookie and then decorate as you wish.


Christmas Stockings

Christmas Trees

Making Sugar Cookies takes time and they need to dry overnight once decorated with icing. I put the decorated cookies on cookie sheets and covered each tray with aluminum foil to dry before stacking. On Monday, the Sugar Cookies were dry and I placed them carefully in cookie tins to give as gifts. You can find a ton of Sugar Cookie recipes on the web to choose from. I used vanilla extract but lemon, coconut, and almond extract are also great choices to bump up the flavor in whatever recipe you use.

Ornaments

Ornaments

I hope you can find time to make Sugar Cookies this holiday. I am certainly not an artist but tried to be as creative as I could. With each year, I am learning more from all the amazing bloggers out there and getting better at it. It is fun and for me very relaxing to bake accompanied by tunes. Happy holidays from Two Frys!

-Sophia/Two Frys