Iced sugar cookies

This week, we had a small baby shower-ish celebration for a friend of mine at work. Since even I couldn't justify bringing a tiered cake for seven people, I was on the fence about what to bring and finally settled on iced sugar cookies. I have made a ton of them in my adult life, but the icing hasn't ever quite been what I hoped for. Until now.

I used new recipes for both the cookies and the icing. My cookie recipe was fine before, but I wanted to make this batch super-thick and I didn't think the "usual" recipe would hold up. I used rolling pin bands to make sure they were consistent for even baking, and the cookies came out great--here is the sugar cookie recipe I used.



What? Hearts are for baby showers, too! Since I grew up in a large family and almost physically cannot make things in single batches, I doubled the cookie dough recipe and had so much that I got to try out a variety of cutters.

On to the icing. In the past, I have used royal icing to flood cookies. It works ok, but doesn't get me that smooth finish I always hope for, so I tried this recipe...but substituted vanilla extract for the almond extract. It was perfect! I colored batches of it and got to work on hearts, shoes, crowns, lips, and...

oh yeah, baby onesies...the whole reason I started this project!







I was very happy with how they came out. The icing does a nice job of keeping the cookies moist, and it dries in several hours so well that the cookies can be stacked without messing up the decoration. The colors stay vibrant, too.

The little get-together was scheduled for 10am, and even though I think that is late enough in the day for dessert, not everyone feels that way. So I put them in individual bags for everyone, making sure to set some aside to send home for my friend to take home to her husband and daughter.



Ben and I already have plans for the next batch of decorated cookies!