Bake Sugar Cookies for Christmas
With their colourful icing decoration, sugar cookies are fun to bake and easy to decorate and is a great family project that the kids will love.
20/11/2021
wilton.com
Sugar cookies are everyone's favourite cookie because they are so easy to make, and you can cut them into any shape for a birthday party, celebration, special occasion or holiday. This all-round popular favourite doesn't require that much baking know-how and it is a great project for the kids to do during the school holidays.
Cookie cutters in assorted holiday shapes @ R149 from @Home.co.za
Cookie cutters 20 assorted shapes @ R399 from Makro.co.za.
Christmas cookie cutters @ R56 per 8-piece from sprinklesbakeandparty.co.za.
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How to Make Sugar Cookies
The ingredients to make sugar cookies you probably already have in your pantry. If you want to make more sugar cookies you can double the ingredients for a larger batch.
YOU WILL NEED:
Sugar Cookies
1 ½ cups of icing sugar, sifted
2 ½ Cups of plain flour, sifted
1 egg
1 cup of butter, room temperature
3 tsp. vanilla essence
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
Icing
2 cups icing sugar
2 egg whites
Dash of lemon juice
Embellishments
Equipment
Mixing bowls
Wooden spoon
Whisk
Stirring spatula
Rolling pin
HERE'S HOW:
Sugar Cookies
-- Step 1
In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sifted icing sugar and softened butter with a wooden spoon. In a separate bowl put the egg and vanilla essence. Combine this with the icing sugar and softened butter and mix well until the eggs are thoroughly incorporated.
-- Step 2
Put the sifted flour, salt and baking powder in another bowl and slowly add to the butter and egg mixture and stir until thoroughly mixed and the batter is a bit sticky but not too thick, you may need to finish off the dough with your hands.
-- Step 3
Lightly add sifted flour to your worktop to roll out the dough with a rolling pin. The dough should be about 4 to 5mm thick.
-- Step 4
Now you can use cookie cutters to make the shapes you want. If you haven't managed to find a cookie cutter, you can use a sharp knife to cut out the shapes.
-- Step 5
Pre-heat the oven to 180-degrees and bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown.
Icing
In a mixing bowl, combine the egg whites and lemon juice and whisk until frothy. Slowly add the icing sugar and continue mixing. You want a fairly stiff mixture that isn't runny, especially for icing decorations onto your sugar cookies. At this stage, you can add food colouring. If you want more than one colour for icing, split the mix into separate bowls to add other colouring. Spread icing over the top of the cookies and then use an icing gun or plastic icing bag to create your decorations. Put the cookies aside until the icing sets.
You should be able to source cookie cutter shapes to create the most adorable sugar cookie designs or you can cut them out by hand.
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Even an inexperienced or budding baker will be able to decorate sugar cookies for the festive season.
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If you haven't done any icing before, try your hand at a few basic designs before you bake up a batch for the holidays.
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For the more experienced baker, why not try something different this year like these stained glass sugar cookies?
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To make these stained glass sugar cookies, you will need star-shaped cookie cutters in large and small sizes to cut out the shapes.
You will also need assorted colours of boiled sweets that will melt when placed in the oven. Use a rolling pin to shatter these to fill the centre cut outs. Make sure to put the sugar cookies on a piece of baking paper or wax paper so that it will be easy to remove the cookies after baking. You will find full instructions for this project at cookingclassy.com/stained-glass-cookies/
