Easter Sugar Cookies

Delight your family with these decorated Easter Cookies

Nothing brightens up an Easter table more than a plate of brightly colored, decorated Easter sugar cookies.

This Easter cookie recipe is among my favourites. A very good, versatile sugar cookie recipe that can be used with whatever cookie cutters you wish to use.

Ideal for Easter cookies.

These cookies not only look fabulous and taste great, but you will have great fun decorating them. Let your imagination run wild.

Cover them with cookie icing or royal icing and pipe on decorations. Or leave un-iced and pipe around the edges and decorate. Decorate with edible glitter, dragees, sprinkles or nonpareils.

To create these decorated Easter cookies, I used royal icing for the decorations. I prefer to use royal icing for piping, as it is easy to work with and sets hard so that your creations will stay intact and won't be ruined.

Easter Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

¾ cup / 6 oz / 170 g unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain / all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda / baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
¼ teaspoon salt

Method

Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until the butter is light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and continue beating until creamy.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt and add to the butter mixture gradually in two additions. Beat on low speed after each addition until the ingredients are just combined and no dry flour remains.
Divide the dough into 2 and flatten into discs. Wrap each disc with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator overnight. When ready to use, remove the dough from the fridge and leave for 30 minutes, or until soft enough to roll.
Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F and line two baking sheets with parchment. Working with one disc at a time, roll out to a thickness of 3 mm / 1/8 inch. Cut out shapes using Easter cookie cutters, placing the cutters as close to the edge as possible to get as many cookies as you possibly can from the first rolling.
Repeat with the remaining cookie dough. Gather the remaining scraps together, reroll and cut out more cookie shapes.
Place on baking trays about 2 inches apart and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes or until the edges are just golden.
Leave to rest on the cookie trays for about 5 minutes then, using a spatula transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Cook’s Tips

When working with each portion of dough, refrigerate the other to keep chilled.
If the dough becomes too sticky to work, place in the freezer for a few minutes. But do remember to keep a close eye on it, or it will start to freeze.
Placing the dough between two sheets of parchment paper will make it easier to roll.

Looking for more sugar cookie recipes?