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.
Glory, I’m from Sri Lanka, this is my first vist to your website , it is really helpful & very beautiful. Though I’m a newbie I will try this.Thanks for sharing.
Welcome! I hope you look around and find some other sweet ideas you like too! =)
Do you have a recipe for the royal icing that DOES NOT use meringue powder?.Thanks
I have only made royal icing with meringue powder, but I know it can be made with egg whites (preferably pasteurized). If you google “royal icing with egg whites” I’m sure you’ll find a recipe to try. As an alternative, you could experiment with “glaze” icing, which has no eggs (dried or otherwise) in it, but it can be difficult to get quite the right consistency with glaze icing, as it doesn’t ever mix up quite as thick as royal icing. Best of luck!
Om gosh. .
They are so beautiful..thanks so very much sharing
You really are amazing
Looking forward to the next video
Kat
This is my first visit to your website. I’m so happy I found you thru a FB post from Art Of The Pie. I found the video extremely helpful. It helped me to see the difference between flood consistency & piping consistency. After watching it I actually think I can make these! : )
I like video best because it helps me see your technique better.
Perfect, thanks for your comment! I will try for some more videos in the new year!
These are beautiful! The video is so helpful and makes me want to give this a try. Merry Christmas!
Thanks so much for your feedback! Merry Christmas to you as well!
These are absolutely beautiful–relatively simple to do but they look like they took hours. That’s my favorite kind of cookie! And I’m a video person so I love your video format! So much easier for me to learn when I can actually see it done. Thank you!!!!!
Is your ‘light blue’ food coloring from a specific brand or do you mix your own colors?
I generally use Americolor brand icing, but I also have the Wilton ones (the bottles, not the little tubs) and I also like the brand Hobby Lobby sells. All three look like small little plastic bottles that are a concentrated liquid/gel. None of these brands have a blue that is titled “light blue”, but my favorite blue is Sky Blue by Americolor. I think that’s likely what I used here.
Thank you for sharing, this cookies are so beautiful, the color combination is perfect. Your video make it seem so easy. I will attempt to do them this Christmas.
I would like to get the icing receipe please
The icing recipe is linked in the full blog post above. It’s the link for Royal Icing. Happy baking!