These simple and beautiful Winter Wonderland Cookies are perfect for any winter holiday or party!
Here in California we still have lots of sunshine… but I can dream of snow with these cute cookies!
One of my favorite things about this set of cookies is that it only requires a few icing colors and some very simple techniques to create a fun and engaging collection!
And although these cookies would be adorable for Christmas, they’d also be perfect for any winter holiday or party… all the way into January.
Let’s decorate and dream of snow together!
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Winter Wonderland Cookies Decorating Instructions –
Start with a batch of my Perfect Sugar Cookies.
For this set you’ll need some round cookies (large and mini), some snowflakes and a simple tree (I used a mini tree cutter from Ecrandal, but I do not see it on their site currently).
Prepare a batch of Royal Icing.
For this set, I made…
Pale blue icing with a #2 tip, medium/flood consistency
Lime green icing with a #2 tip, medium/flood consistency
Medium-dark green icing with a #2 tip, medium/flood consistency
White icing with a #1.5 tip, piping consistency
White icing with a #2 tip, medium/flood consistency
You’ll also need white non-pareils sprinkles and white and/or light blue snowflake sprinkles (optional)
I’m trying something new and sharing the decorating process with a video, in place of step-by-step photos.
I’d love your feedback as to which you prefer (photos or video). Please don’t say “both”… I’m only human! =)
Enjoy this short video for the step-by-step decorating tutorial…
A few additional decorating notes…
For the large round cookies (the tree scene), the trees should be added immediately after the cookie has been “flooded” with the white and blue icing.
For the mini trees, (pictured in this post, but not show in the video) the same technique (called “wet-on-wet”) should be used.
For the snowflakes, outline and flood the cookies, then allow to dry (1-4 hours) before adding the white details.
How to Make Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing
Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing
Ingredients
Perfect Sugar Cookies
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt good quality
- 1 cup unsalted butter 2 sticks, room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg large
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract good quality, see flavor options in notes
Royal Icing
- 4 tablespoons meringue powder
- 4 cups powdered sugar about 1 pound
- 6 tablespoons warm water to start
Instructions
Perfect Sugar Cookies
- In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This should take 2-3 minutes.
- Add the egg and vanilla and beat another minute or so.
- Add the flour mixture slowly. (Be careful not to add too much at a time or you will have a snowstorm of flour.)
- Blend until all of the flour is incorporated. The mixture will look crumbly at first but just keep blending until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
- Remove about half of the dough from the bowl and knead by hand just a bit to form a smooth ball. Roll out dough onto a lightly floured work surface, or onto a piece of plastic wrap (as described in detail in the blog post above).
- Cut out cookies into desired shapes and place entire baking sheet of unbaked cookies into the freezer for 5 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°F and bake cookies in preheated oven for 9-11 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of your cookies.
- The cookies are baked when then are no longer shinny on top, but they will not show much of any change in color.
- Cool on baking sheet just a minute or so, then carefully move to a wire cooling rack and allow to cool fully before decorating.
Royal Icing
- Beat all ingredients until stiff peaks form.
- Spoon some of the thick white icing into individual bowls and add coloring .
- Add additional water, about 1 teaspoon at a time until you’ve reached the consistency you need.
Notes
Nutrition
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Happy winter cookie decorating!
Disclosure – Amazon links provided for your convenience. I may receive a small commission when you shop using the links in this post.
Hello!
Your cookies look so amazing!I had a question about royal icing, is it supposed to be extremely sweet? I had made some royal icing and the sweetness was just too much. Can you offer sooner advice?
Hi Gloria,
I cannot thank you enough for your time and your talent. You have been so very helpful. I look forward to attempting this beautiful challenge and can only pray they will turn out for the holiday. Very nervous, but still very willing to give them a try.! have a very blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year! I look forward to enjoying your site more once things cam down after the holidays 🙂 Cheryl
Can you please give me any on how much powdered sugar to add water to get the medium flood effect (shampoo) and the piping effect (toothpaste) since I am doing this for the first time? I would really appreciate your help. I REALLY want your cookies to turn out 🙂
Thank you so very much and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!
Hi Cheryl, Because I don’t generally measure out the amount of white icing that I move to smaller bowl to color, then amount of water I add to thin the icing will vary each time. So, once you make the big bowl of thick white icing (using my recipe), then you’ll take a big scoop or two of that icing and put it in a smaller bowl, then add your color and then slowly add water, a teaspoon or less at a time, stirring as you go, until you’ve reached the consistency you are looking for. The toothpaste consistency will be icing that as you stir with a spoon, it makes lines in the bowl of icing that do not “heal” or fill in right away. For the shampoo consistency, as you stir your icing, or even pick up a spoonful of icing and let it pour back into the bowl, the little ribbon of icing falling off the spoon into the bowl, should take about 10 seconds to “heal” or become one with the rest of the bowl of icing.
As you are working… if you are outlining and then filling in the icing on the cookie and the icing is running right off the cookie, then it’s too thin. If you are piping and the icing will not lay flat after flooding, and wiggling the cookie around a bit, then the icing is too thick.
Working with royal icing does take some practice, but once you find what works for you, it can be really fun! Happy decorating!
Beautiful. Can these be frozen and if so for how long.
Thanks for responding! I see the sentence, “Enjoy this short video…”… but nothing is there. I did find the video with the link to your FB page. Thank you so much! Your artwork is awesome and videos are fun to watch!