To celebrate Spring, I love baking and decorating sugar cookies themed with tulips, baby chicks, and Easter eggs! These crispy cookies have a unique flavor with ground cardamom, while vibrant royal icing creates the adorable decorations.
To celebrate my engagement to my husband back in 2021, I baked a big batch of these Easter sugar cookies. I decorated them with vibrant colors and shared them with my family to celebrate the momentous occasion!
I like including ground cardamom and ground cloves to give these cookies a more warm Springtime flavor. And while these extra baking spices are optional, I think it gives each cookie an extra KA-POW of flavor, like my brown butter sugar cookies.
To make each cookie look Spring themed, you'll want to use cookie cutters than invoke Spring like butterflies, flowers, carrots, bunnies, baby chicks, and Easter eggs.
Recipe Tips
- Chill the Dough: After rolling out the dough, place it in the fridge for at least 1 hour. This helps the cookies retain their shape during baking.
- Consistent Thickness: Ensure that the dough is rolled out to an even thickness. Otherwise some parts of the cookies could cook faster than others.
- Piping Consistency: For detailed designs, use a thicker icing for outlining and a slightly thinner one for "flooding" or filling in the inside of the cookies.
Recipe Variations
- Citrus: Add some fresh lemon zest or orange zest to the dough for a citrus twist.
- Extracts: You can substitute the vanilla extract for different extracts like almond, coconut, or peppermint for unique flavors.
- Colorful Icings: Experiment with different shades of royal icing to create a vibrant array of cookies. Pastel colors are especially fitting for spring. I chose to make neon colors which are more eye-catching.
- Sprinkles: Before the royal icing sets, you could add sprinkles or even edible glitter to enhance the festive look of your cookies!
- Buttercream: If you aren't a fan of royal icing, you could also decorate your Spring sugar cookies with colored buttercream!
Storing
Room Temperature: Store decorated cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week. Separate each layer of cookies with parchment paper, to avoid messing up your royal icing designs.
Freezing: Freeze undecorated cookies in a single layer on a baking sheet for about 2 hours, until they're hard. Then transfer them to a freezer-safe bag or container for up to 3 months. Thaw at room temperature before decorating them.
Spring Sugar Cookies
developed & tested by:
Ingredients
Easter Sugar Cookies
- 1½ cups all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup butter (1 stick) softened to room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
Royal Icing
- 6 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 egg white
- 4 - 8 tablespoon 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.
infinitelyadaydreamer says
Oh my goodness! Congratulations on your engagement love x
Rachel Duerden says
I love tulips. And, many congratulations on your engagement. 😀
strawberryandcream says
Thank you so so much! Are tulips your favorite flower? 🌷
Rachel Duerden says
I'd say roses are my favourite but tulips are a close second. 🌹🌷
Yum-number1 says
You're fiancé better know he's damn lucky to be with you! He'll be getting fed great food FOREVER!!!
strawberryandcream says
Hahaha! I think he know, he says he is going to gain weight from all the yummy cooking when we live together 😅
Jim says
Easter cookies are so bright and spring like. Congratulations on getting engaged!
strawberryandcream says
Thank you so much!! The cardamom and cloves helps give it an extra warm flavor too 😋