I took these to a friend's house for our St. Patrick's Day get together and I did not bring a single one home! I actually had to take them away so there would still be some when the rest of the group arrived!
St. Patrick's Day Sugar Cookies
You can use your favorite sugar cookie recipe, but I'll give you the one I use just in case.
Ingredients:
3 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Cup butter, softened (I like to use unsalted)
1 Cup sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
food coloring if you want
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk together the flour and salt and then set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. This is much, much easier with a mixer! Add the egg and vanilla to the butter mixture and mix until fully combined.
Slowly add the flour to the butter mixture until both are fully incorporated.
If you are putting food coloring in your cookie dough, do so now. Mix until the color is evenly dispersed.
Now it's time to roll out the dough. Divide the dough into sections and roll them into disc shaped balls. What I find to be the easiest is to roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper. Make sure you use rulers or something else so that you roll out the pieces evenly. (I used two magazines.) Stack the rolled out pieces on a cookie sheet (parchment, cookie dough, parchment etc...) and place them in the fridge for about 20 minutes so they firm up.
After you take the cookie dough out of the fridge separate the pieces and cut out the cookies! I find it is also easiest to bake them on parchment paper too so they don't stick. Arrange the cookies on the cookie sheet at least 1/2 apart.
Bake them for 8-10 minutes. Bake time will depend on your oven and the thickness of your cookies so I would check them at 8 min and go from there. The edges should be just barely golden brown when they're cooked.
Frosting Time!
Ingredients:
Confectioner's Sugar
Liquid Pasteurized Egg Whites
Warm Water
Vanilla or other Extract
For the icing there are two different recipes. One for the piping icing, and one for the flood icing. The piping icing is used to outline and section off parts of the cookie. It is thicker than the flood icing. The flood icing is used to fill in the sections of the cookie. Recipes can be doubled if you are making a lot of cookies/colors.
Piping icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons egg whites
1 Tablespoon warm water
1 teaspoon extract
Mix all ingredients together with an electric mixer until the consistency resembles toothpaste, maybe a little less dense. I always check by making small loops with the frosting on a napkin and if they fill in then the frosting is not thick enough.
Flood Icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons egg whites
3 Tablespoons warm water
1 Tablespoon extract
Mix ingredients together until the icing is thicker than water, but thin enough that it spreads out when placed on a surface. Should take about fiveish minutes.
For coloring the icings, I like to use the liquid food coloring just because it's easier to mix, but any kind will work. I like to start with five drops of whatever color I'm using and go from there. Make sure that if you are not working with the icing that it is covered up. This icing will stiffen quickly.
The best thing I've ever invested in for cookie decorating is squeeze bottles. I bought them for $1 each at the store and they have saved so much time and mess! I definitely recommend getting yourself some.
How I Decorated My Cookies
Outline the clover with green piping, flood with green
Outline the pot with green piping, make the gold on top with yellow piping, flood with green
Use white piping to outline the rainbow and separate the cloud section. With yellow piping, pipe the middle color in the rainbow. Use blue and red flood icing to color in the other sections. To add a little texture I used real frosting and a tip to make the clouds.
These were a great addition to our St. Patrick's Day celebrations! Let me know how they turn out for you! =]
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