Sugar cookies with royal icing

Oooh how I love a good sugar cookie! But I am picky about them I hate it when there is too much frosting and the cookie is too sweet. Yes I know, SUGAR COOKIE. It's supposed to be sweet but I like mine a bit mellow and more tasty. As in vanilla bean tasty.

 

1 rounded cup AP flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

Half of a beaten egg 

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 c salted butter, room temp

The seeds of one vanilla bean pod

1 1/1 tbsp whole milk

Powdered sugar for rolling out the dough

Beat butter, sugar and vanilla bean seeds in mixer for 3 minutes, using a dough hook if you have one.

Mix egg, milk and vanilla extract together. Mix flour,  b. powder and salt in another bowl.

Once the butter mixture is done on low speed add the egg mixture. Let this mix until smooth.

Slowly, in little batches, add the flour mixture to the wet mix.

This was right befor I added the last pile of flour which was like 3 tbsps. You want to keep mixing until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Dump the cookie dough onto tin foil and wrap up and chill for 1-2 hours (this keeps in the fridge for two weeks if you wrap it well and then stick it in a ziplock bag.)

Pre heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Roll out cookie dough on powdered sugar on your CLEAN counter top. You will want your dough to be about 1/8" thick.

Use any cutter you like the smaller the cookie the less time it will take to bake. I did large snowflakes and small quarter sized stars

The snowflakes took 8 minute total to cook rotating halfway through. Take it out and let it cool on the sheet

The Stars took 4 minutes rotating half way through. Take them out and let them cool on the sheet.

This gives them a crunchy outer shell and a chewy texture inside

I pulled mine out a minute late and they browned too much and got too crunchy for me. ONE MINUTE.

You can then decorate them with royal icing which is powdered sugar with barely any water. I added blue food coloring to mine and then I had these adorable icing designs I got at William Sonoma.

I got them on sale after the holidays were over for 99 cents. They are good until 2013 lol... To make my small heart cookies I used small aspic cookie cutters The same ones from the add on the side. I use them alot to cut vegetables into cute shapes for my lunches. Poker night I use the heart, spade, club and diamond cutters to cut out cheese. Lol I'm silly like this.

The super cool glass topped wine cork my Grandparents got me in Ireland is in the corner. I don't know why I didn't notice this before :/

I'm a terrible decorator in case you haven't noticed.

Sorry I didn't update for awhile it got SUPER hectic around here and money got tight so we were living with spaghetti for awhile lol And the few times I made something I couldn't find my cord so I have a few recipes on back log now that I got my cord (THIS ONE

Pulled it under the bed for a late night SNACK. I honestly didn't think the cord was going to work. Its hanging on by broken wires. : / I hope I get a new camera for Christmas lol.