Baking

Sugar Cookies

Soft, buttery vanilla cookies that hold their shape beautifully — the perfect canvas for cutting into hearts, stars and rounds and decorating with royal icing.

Makes 20-25 cookies (depending on cutter size) · Prep 45 mins · Cook 10 mins · 9 ingredients · 14 steps

Ingredients

• 150g unsalted butter (softened)
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 medium egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 350g plain flour
• 500g royal icing sugar (for the icing)
• 60-80ml water (for the icing)
• Food colouring gels (to decorate)
• Sprinkles or edible pearls (to decorate)

Method

Cookies

1. Cream the butter and sugar. Beat the butter and caster sugar together until light and fluffy — a stand mixer with the beater attachment or an electric hand whisk makes short work of this.
2. Beat in the egg. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat again until smooth.
3. Bring the dough together. Add the plain flour and mix until the dough starts to come together. Bring it into a ball with your hands — it should be soft but not sticky. Add a touch more flour if it clings to your fingers.
4. Chill the dough. Wrap the dough and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
5. Heat the oven. Preheat the oven to 180C Fan or 200C regular and line two or three baking trays with parchment paper.
6. Roll and cut. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 5mm thick and cut out your shapes. Re-roll the offcuts until all the dough is used.
7. Tray the cookies. Place the cookies onto the lined trays, leaving a little space between each one.
8. Bake until pale. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until just barely turning golden at the edges — they should still look pale on top.
9. Cool completely. Leave the cookies to cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. They must be stone cold before icing.

Decorating

10. Mix the royal icing. Whisk the royal icing sugar with the water, adding the water a little at a time, until you have a smooth icing. For piping outlines you want a thicker consistency; for flooding, thin it until a ribbon of icing disappears back into the surface after about 10 seconds.
11. Colour the icing. Split the icing between bowls and colour each one with gel food colouring.
12. Outline and flood. Pipe an outline around the edge of each cookie with the thicker icing and leave it to set for a few minutes, then flood the middle with the thinner icing and nudge it into the corners with a cocktail stick.
13. Marble and decorate. While the flood icing is still wet, add dots or lines of a second colour and drag a cocktail stick through them to marble, or scatter over sprinkles and edible pearls.
14. Dry overnight. Leave the decorated cookies to dry completely — ideally overnight — before stacking or packaging.

Good to know

• Chilling the dough is what keeps the edges sharp, so do not skip it. If the kitchen is warm, chill the cut-out shapes on the tray for 10 minutes before baking too.
• Roll to an even thickness so the cookies bake at the same rate — rolling guides or two rulers either side of the dough help.
• Do not overbake. They firm up considerably as they cool, and a pale cookie stays soft.
• Undecorated cookies keep in an airtight container for 5-7 days, and the raw dough freezes well for up to 3 months.
• Decorated cookies will keep for a week or so once the icing has set hard.
• Swap the vanilla for almond, lemon or orange extract, or add the zest of a lemon or orange to the dough.