Sugar Cookies

Preparation

Note: You can use all butter instead of half shortening in these cookies. I tend to use half shortening as it makes them a little firmer and less likely to all break while icing them with small children! If that’s not a concern you can use all butter instead. You can also replace the almond extract with vanilla if you like. Makes 5-6 dozen cookies.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a stand mixer, or with an electric mixer, cream together the sugar, butter and shortening until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and almond extract and mix well. Add the flour mixture and mix again until well combined. Divide the dough into 4 pieces and wrap each with plastic wrap and then chill it until it is firm, 2–3 hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll it out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4-inch thickness. Don’t roll it out too thin or your cookies will be crisp instead of soft and chewy. Cut out your cookies and transfer them to a baking sheet. Bake for 8–10 minutes until they are just barely browning on the edges. We actually prefer them to be white, just before they start to brown.

Repeat with the remaining dough. Allow the cookies to cool for 5–10 minutes on the cookie sheet before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.

For decorating the cookies:
To decorate the cookies, we do it two ways. You can either spread them quickly with glaze (I just mix icing sugar with a bit of almond extract and enough milk to make it runny, about 1 cup sugar to 1-2 tablespoons milk) and sprinkles, or use royal icing to make designs. The simple glazed ones do taste better, but the royal icing looks prettier, so whichever you’re going for isi fine. We like a combination!

To make the royal icing, combine the meringue powder and water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add icing sugar and mix well. Add corn syrup and almond extract and beat the mixture for 5–7 minutes until stiff peaks form. Divide the icing into different bowls depending on how many colours you want to make and tint each of them. I like to use the gel food colouring to get brighter colours. Keep any icing that you’re not working with covered as it hardens quickly when exposed to the air.

In order to do the decorating shown in the pictures, you need piping icing (which is what we just made) and flooding icing. To make flooding icing, you add water to the tinted icing, a teaspoon at a time, until it is thin enough that when you allow a spoonful to drizzle back into the bowl of icing, the “ribbon” of icing will disappear in 2–3 seconds. After tinting, I take out some of each colour and thin it out to make this flooding icing. The piping icing I then put into piping bags, and the flooding icing I put into squeeze bottles.

To decorate, pipe around the edges of the cookies and then fill them in with the flooding icing, using a toothpick to spread the flooded icing right to the piped edges and to remove any air bubbles. Let that icing set for about a minute, and then you can use the other colours of flooding icing to make designs by squeezing dots or stripes onto the flooded cookie. You can then use a toothpick, dragging it through the stripes or dots to create different designs if you like.

I usually work with 3-4 cookies at a time, edging all of them, then flooding all of them, then going back and adding designs to all of them. Allow the cookies to set overnight before storing them in an airtight container. They can be frozen for up to 3 months.