Sugar cookies are easy to make at home if you start with a good sugar cookie recipe. To make them successful, you should bring all the ingredients to room temperature. Sift the dry ingredients before adding them to the wet ingredients. Here is my favorite sweet cookie recipe.
Basic Sugar Cookies
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and both sugars for two minutes at medium speed until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add the vanilla. In another bowl, mix the flour and salt. Slowly add the dry mixture to the mix until all the flour is incorporated. Place the dough in a bowl or plastic bag and refrigerate for at least an hour. Roll out the dough on a board lined with parchment paper until 1/4-inch thick. Using a cookie cutter of your choice, cut out cookies. All cookies of the same size should be baked together. Otherwise, the smaller cookies will burn before the larger ones are baked.
Place the cut out cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden brown. The yield of this recipe will depend on the size of cookie cutters you use.
Important cookie dough tip: To cut the cookie dough, use the cookie cutters close together. This will help you avoid having to keep rolling out the dough, which makes the baked cookies tough. Press the cookie cutter into the cookie dough and wiggle a little to get a clean cut. Remove the cookie cutter.
Flavor fondant: Fondant can be flavored with concentrated candy flavors to enhance the taste. Just knead a little candy flavoring into the fondant to achieve the desired taste. Kids love the bubble gum flavor.
How to quickly decorate your baked sugar cookies with fondant: Use store-bought fondant to quickly decorate your baked sugar cookies. To use the fondant from the package, you need to cut it into smaller pieces and then knead it until it is pliable. Then you can put it all back together and knead it into a ball. Put it in a plastic bag so it doesn’t dry out. Take out some of the fondant and roll it out thin, about 1/8″ thick. Use the same cookie cutter to cut out the fondant, and place the fondant cutouts on a sheet of wax paper until you have them all cut out.
Take a food-safe brush and some piping gel to paint the center part of the baked sugar cookie, and then place the fondant cookie cutter on top. Carefully smooth the fondant cutout onto the baked sugar cookie so that it is completely attached to the cookie. Set aside and repeat the process with the remaining baked sugar cookies.
Conclusion
To decorate the top of the sugar cookies, you can use simple decorating tools or items you have in the kitchen that you can use to make impressions in the fondant (forks, clean lace or cake decorating tools). You can also apply a thin layer of piping gel to the fondant, then add sanding sugar on top of the piping gel and shake the cookie to remove the excess.
Once you have decorated all of the baked sugar cookies, you will need to give the fondant time to set before wrapping the cookies in cellophane bags or stacking them on a cookie plate. Typically, fondant takes 12-24 hours to harden.