Vanilla Sugar Cookies

These are the best sugar cookies you will ever eat. They stay soft and crisp and delicious much longer. I saw some gorgeous donut-shaped sugar cookies on Pinterest recently and was so drawn so how lovely they were.

This was my first time trying out sugar cookies and I think I didn't so bad for a first trail plus the recipe is very simple and straight forward. They bake in less than 10 minutes and that's honestly the best thing.

I chilled the cookies for about 15 minutes before baking them. It is always a good practice to refrigerate cookies while the oven is preheating. Chilling cookie dough helps solidify the butter in the cookies which helps when baking, preventing the cookies from spreading.

The frosting is so simple and easy to make. It is a mixture of just icing sugar, a few tablespoons of milk, food colouring and some vanilla essence. It is always recommended to pipe out the boarders of the cookies first using a piping bag.

Let's get to the recipe!

Prep time: 25 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Servings: 16

Ingredients:

For the cookies

1 cup unsalted butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

A pinch of salt

For the icing

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 drop food coloring

2-3 tablespoons milk

Procedure:

For the cookies:

Cream butter (butter should be room temperature) and sugar in your mixing bowl until light and fluffy. You can use an electric mixer or a paddle.

Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined and smooth consistency.

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together in a separate bowl then add to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Dough will be crumbly.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough comes together, shape into a ball, cover with cling film then refrigerate for 2 hours.

Once the dough is chilled; roll dough on a lightly floured surface evenly. Instead of flouring the surface, I put the dough between 2 sheets of cling film then roll over the cling film about 1/4-inch thick.

Cut out using cookie cutters. Place cut out cookies on a lined cookie sheet 1-2 inches apart and freeze for 15 minutes before baking.

Bake each batch 9-10 minutes. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then move to a cooling rack.

For the frosting:

Mix together 1 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 drop of red food coloring, and 1 tablespoon milk until smooth and quite thick consistency.

Scoop 1/3 of the icing in a piping bag with a thing piping tip, and pipe out the borders on the cookies.

Add a bit more milk to the rest of the icing to thin it out. To fill the insides in, use just a regular teaspoon with a narrow tip.

In the same bowl with the rest of the bright pink icing, add another cup of powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and milk. The remaining bright color should be enough to mix in with the new ingredients and receive a pale pink color.

Repeat all the decorating steps with the new icing for the rest of the cookies.

Notes

One batch of the icing should be enough for 6-7 cookies.