Marbled Icing Sugar Cookies - Christmas Sugar Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you make sugar cookie dough taste better? ›

Almond Extract: For a twist on the traditional sugar cookie flavor, try adding a small amount of almond extract. Start with 1/2 teaspoon and adjust according to your preference. Citrus Zest: Incorporate the zest of citrus fruits like lemon, orange, or lime into the dough. The zest adds a bright and refreshing flavor.

Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating. I like to decorate cookies directly on baking sheets so I can stick the entire baking sheet in the refrigerator to help set the icing. So place the cooled cookies back on baking sheets.

For a mostly white spaced out marble look like ours, take roughly 100g of white sugarpaste and colour it using a little peaco*ck blue food colouring, then knead to fully distribute the colour. Feel free to play around with the quantities to achieve your desired marble effect!

Attaching the icing

Lightly brush the icing with water. This will allow the icing to adhere to the biscuit. Carefully lay the icing onto the biscuit and use your finger to gently round out any rough edges.

Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle. Take your time creaming the sugar and butter together at the beginning.

→ Follow this tip: Chill sugar cookie dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or in the freezer for 15 minutes. The dough will be so much easier to work with! It will roll out nicely, and if you're making cut-outs, chilled dough will help you get clean, sharp edges.

That over-expanded dough loses its perfect texture. In the case of pie, the crust won't be light and flaky. For cookies, they'll spread out too quickly, tasting doughy and soft instead of full-bodied and chewy.

Unless a recipe tells you otherwise, you should always store sugar cookies at room temperature to make sure that they taste as good on day three as they did on day one. Keep them in a cool, dry area of your kitchen; any additional humidity may change their texture, particularly with frosted sugar cookies.

How far in advance can I make decorated sugar cookies? ›

Decorated Sugar Cookies

If you decide to leave them in the fridge, they will last about a week, but keep in mind that it's best to eat them within the first three days. When it comes to the freezer, decorated sugar cookies can be kept there as long as undecorated ones, so about three months.

Place a few drops of food coloring into the icing and use a toothpick to swirl it through (don't overdo it, just swirl it enough to blend the coloring into the icing). Working with one cookie at a time, sweep the cookie through the top of the icing, making a backward “C”.

For this technique, you'll want to decorate your cookies before baking. We recommend using decorative sugar (also known as colored sanding sugar), Turbinado sugar (coarse golden sugar) or pearl sugar (coarse clear sugar). It all sounds super fancy but it's really very easy!

Egg white powder is dried egg whites aka powdered egg whites. No matter what you call it, this is one of our community's favorite substitutes for meringue powder. “I've used powdered egg whites for royal icing (that calls for meringue powder) just fine. Meringue powder has sugar in it.