We got engaged!!!
On my birthday two weeks ago, we went to the Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon. It was an overcast and windy day, and the colors of the tulips really popped against the grey sky. It was still a bit early in the season for the tulips, so they weren’t all in full bloom. But it was the most beautiful and exciting day for me, because we got engaged!! My fiancé got down on one knee in an open field and asked me to spend the rest of our lives together! 🥰 And I said “of course!” with tears in my eyes and the biggest smile on my face!! It was the first day of Spring and the first day of a brand new chapter in our lives. To celebrate, I wanted to share some of the photos from the gorgeous tulip farm & Easter cookies that are delicious & adorable!
Adorable Easter Cookies
For my birthday, my mom gave me a set of super cute Spring-themed cookie cutters. What more do you need in life than cookies shaped like bunnies, carrots, butterflies, eggs, tulips and baby chickees!? I have grown to love the meditative act of decorating sugar cookies with royal icing. I made my first batch at the beginning of the year, with Harry Potter sugar cookies.
However, I am still trying to perfect my royal icing game, because this time the icing was a bit too soft. After sitting out to dry overnight, the icing still smooshed in and moved when I touched it. 😱 But, practice makes perfect, and they still taste delicious! 🦋
The recipe for these sugar cookies includes cardamom and ground cloves to give it a more warm Spring-time flavor. You don’t have to add these spices, but I think it gives it an extra little KA-POW of flavor. 😍 Do you decorate sugar cookies in the Spring? Or dye Easter eggs? Or maybe engage in a little holiday baking?
Happy Spring!! Happy Easter!!! 🐣🐇🌷
Easter Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Easter Sugar Cookies
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ½ cup butter (1 stick) softened to room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
Royal Icing
- 6 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 egg white
- 4 – 8 Tbsp water
Instructions
Make Easter Sugar Cookies
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
- In another large mixing bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the softened butter and the sugar until it is smooth and a pale yellow color.
- Add the egg and vanilla extract to the creamed butter and sugar and mix until it's all combined.
- Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix them all together until it forms a wet dough and there are no dry pockets of flour left.
- Form the dough into a disc (a flattened ball) and wrap it in plastic cling wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour, or overnight.
- Remove the dough from the fridge. Lightly flour a clean work surface and roll out the dough until it's about ¼-inch thick. Preheat the oven to 350°F
- Cut out shapes using your cookie cutters and place the cut-out shapes onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat. Once you cut out shapes in the rolled-out dough, form the dough back into a ball, roll it out again, and cut out more shapes.
- Bake your cookies for about 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges start to turn the lightest shade of golden brown. Move the cookies from the baking sheet to a wire cooling rack and cool them completely before decorating them.
Decorate with Royal Icing
- Sift the powdered sugar into a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer.Add in the egg white and 4 tablespoons of water.Begin whisking with a hand mixer or begin mixing on a low speed with the paddle attachment on a stand mixer.
- If the icing looks and feels too thick to be able to pipe onto cookies, add another tablespoon of water and a time, until it's your desired texture.
- Add a few dollops of the icing into a small bowl and cover the rest of the icing with plastic cling wrap so it doesn't dry out. Mix in gel food coloring to your bit of icing that was separated into a small bowl. For my Easter cookies, I used black, purple, orange, yellow, green, pink and purple gel food coloring. For the white, I just didn't add any coloring, as the icing is naturally white.
- Pour your dyed icing into a piping bag and go to town! Repeat with separating a few dollops of icing into a small bowl, dyeing it, adding in into a piping bag, and decorating your delicious cookies.
Easter cookies are so bright and spring like. Congratulations on getting engaged!
Thank you so much!! The cardamom and cloves helps give it an extra warm flavor too 😋
You’re fiancé better know he’s damn lucky to be with you! He’ll be getting fed great food FOREVER!!!
Hahaha! I think he know, he says he is going to gain weight from all the yummy cooking when we live together 😅
I love tulips. And, many congratulations on your engagement. 😀
Thank you so so much! Are tulips your favorite flower? 🌷
I’d say roses are my favourite but tulips are a close second. 🌹🌷
Oh my goodness! Congratulations on your engagement love x