Snowflake Cookies

Hi, everyone! I’m back from my blogging hiatus, back in school, and ready to bake my way through another semester. I made these cookies on Christmas Eve – we were without snow here in Wisconsin (weird, right?), so I made snowflakes in cookie form!

If you are a new to decorating with royal icing, here are some helpful tips and links:

• I used my grandma’s sugar cookie recipe, which is listed below.  Another good cut-out cookie recipe can be found at Bridget’s wonderful Bake at 350.
• I used a royal icing recipe from Annie’s Eats, which is listed below.
• If you are new to decorating with royal icing, please visit this post by Annie’s Eats, which will teach you about outlining and flooding.  Bake at 350 is also a great resource for cookie decorating and ideas (I love Bridget’s book, too!).

Here are the specifics on how I made these cookies:

• I used a Wilton Comfort Grip snowflake cookie cutter. I purchased mine at a baking shop here in Milwaukee, but I know that craft stores like Hobby Lobby and JoAnn’s carry the Comfort Grip cutters.
• I made three different shades of blue using Wilton gel colors in Royal Blue and Sky Blue.
• Outline and flood each cookie with white royal icing first, wait for the icing to dry, then pipe the blue detailing on each snowflake.

Omi’s Sugar Cookies
Print Recipe
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Beat butter and sugar. Add egg, sour cream, and nutmeg. Add dry ingredients gradually. Chill the batter overnight or for at least 4 hours. Roll out dough and cut with cookie cutters. Bake at 350F until golden (in true fashion, my grandma didn’t give a specific baking time. I baked the cookies for about 8 minutes).  This recipe made a couple dozen snowflake cookies — but as always, the yield will depend on the size of your cookie cutter.

White Royal Icing
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 Tablespoons meringue powder
5 Tablespoons water

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the sheen has disappeared and the icing has a matte appearance (about 7-10 minutes).  Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl to an air-tight container. This will be the stiffest consistency of the icing, and at this point it is still too stiff to use for decorating. Add water a very small amount at a time and stir by hand until fully incorporated. Continue until the icing has reached a consistency appropriate for piping.

You’ll need about two batches of this icing for these cookies. Leave one batch as-is and use it for the white outlining/flooding. Divide the second batch into thirds — and dye each third a different shade of blue for the snowflake detailing.