Easter is coming, and we want to celebrate with sugar cookies! Dump out your cookie cutter collection and find the eggs, flowers, crosses, bunnies, and carrots, because these are easy to decorate even if you struggle with being artistic. Zig zags and squiggles are accomplished by using a pastry bag with a line or bead tip. If that’s not available, just swirl on a covering of color with an offset spatula or butter knife.
Celebrate Easter with Sugar Cookies!
Spring is my time of year to make cut-out cookies and give them the full treatment with every pastel color of icing. This recipe makes a firm yet soft cookie that is slightly sweet and enhanced by the yummy vanilla buttercream frosting. My old-school food coloring from the four-pack of red/blue/yellow/green tints the colors perfectly and even provides a little color wheel art lesson with kids when we mix colors for orange and purple.
This Roll Out Sugar Cookie recipe makes an easy-to-handle dough that freely releases from cutters. That makes it a prime recipe for making with younger cooks, because it’s less frustrating! While the cookies bake, the buttercream frosting can be whipped up, divided into bowls, and tinted in all the colors you want to use on your array of cookies.
Roll-Out Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 c butter or margarine softened
- 1 c sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 t vanilla
- 2 t baking powder
- 3 c flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°
- Cream together butter and sugar
- Beat in egg and vanilla
- Add baking powder and flour, one cup at a time, mixing after each addition.
- Do not chill dough. On a floured surface, roll out dough 1/4" thick. Dip cutters in flour before each use.
- Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet on top rack of oven for 7 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.
- Allow to cool and then decorate with buttercream frosting.
Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
- 1 c butter (2 sticks)
- 1 T vanilla yes, a Tablespoon
- 4 c powdered sugar
- 1-2 T milk
Instructions
- Beat softened butter and vanilla until creamy and fully combined.
- Add powdered sugar, a little at a time, and continue beating with mixer.
- Add small amounts of milk until frosting is desired consistency - thick enough to hold its shape and thin enough to flow through a piping bag.
- Divide into multiple storage bowls and color as desired. Load into pastry bags and add designs to your colorful holiday cookies.
Leftover Frosting
By dividing the frosting into numerous colors, chances are you’re going to have leftover frosting in the bowls and bags. An additional treat to whip up is graham cracker sandwiches with a spread of frosting between each one. I have a sweet memory of the first time in my early marriage that I used up leftover frosting this way. My husband saw what I had made and exclaimed, “Did my mom teach you this?” And I told him, “No, it’s just what you do with leftover frosting!” Am I right? Tell me if you’ve done this!
Check out more cut-out cookie recipes with my Copycat Crumbl Sugar Cookies and Filled Cherry Heart Cookies!
Yes, Graham Crackers with icing!! A quick easy treat from my childhood (and yours)!