Butterfly Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing
These Butterfly Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing are so fun to make! I provide step by step instructions to make these beautiful butterflies.
Servings 18 cookies
Equipment
- butterfly cookie cutter
- 5 pastry bags 5 twist ties or rubber bands
- 5 plastic couplers
- 5 Small round piping tips such as #2
- 5 glasses or cups
- toothpicks
- Paper towels or tip covers
- Wax paper
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 2½ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract
- 16 tablespoons butter at room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ¼ teaspoon lemon zest
For Decorating:
- 1 batch Easy Royal icing see note
- Gel icing colors (red, blue, yellow, green, black, brown)
Instructions
Make the Cookies:
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.2½ cups all purpose flour , 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt
- In a measuring cup, lightly beat the egg with the extracts.1 egg, ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, ¼ teaspoon almond extract
- In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth. With the mixer running, gradually pour in the sugar; add the lemon zest. Beat on medium until fluffy, about 1 minute.16 tablespoons butter, 1 cup granulated sugar, ¼ teaspoon lemon zest
- With the mixer running, pour in the egg mixture and continue beating until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the mixer bowl. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour and mix just until evenly blended.
- Lightly knead the dough to form a ball, press it into a disk 1-inch thick, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight. You can also freeze the dough at this point.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375°F. If you’ve chilled the dough overnight, it will need to sit at room temperature for half an hour or so to soften slightly. If you've frozen the dough, thaw it in the fridge overnight then allow it to soften at room temperature.
- On a very lightly floured sheet of wax paper with a sheet of plastic wrap on top of the dough, roll the dough out to ¼-inch thick. You can use rolling pin guides or wooden dowel rods as guides for achieving even cookie thickness. Cut cookies using a floured cookie cutter. Re-roll scraps, always using as little flour as necessary.
- Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 5-9 minutes, until they no longer look wet on top. The baking time will depend on the size of the cookies you’ve cut. You don’t want the bottoms to be browned, except for maybe just a bit on the edges. Let the cookies cool for a couple minutes on the sheets before transferring them to cooling racks to finish cooling to room temperature.
Decorate the Cookies:
- Prepare the black royal icing by adding brown food coloring gel to white royal icing base, then add black until desired color is achieved. Thin the icing to outline consistency using small amounts of warm water.
- Transfer the black icing to a pastry bag fitted with a small round #1 or #2 tip. The easiest way to do this is to fold over the top of the bag and place it in one of the glasses with a wet paper towel at the bottom. Fill the bag with icing, then unfold the top, push out any air, and twist the bag, securing with a twist tie or rubber band.
- Place the cookies in a single layer on a wax paper lined baking sheet.
- Pipe the body of the butterfly and the outline of the wings. TIP: Make sure to keep paper towels nearby to wipe the piping tip if icing leaks out, otherwise the tip can get messy. You can test each tip before piping by squirting out a little icing on the corner of the waxed paper or into the paper towel while wiping the tip. Sometimes you'll find some of the moisture from the paper towel has gotten into the tip or that the bit of frosting at the tip has dried out a little and needs to be removed.
- Allow the outlined icing to dry for at least 1 hour.
- Meanwhile, prepare each of the colors and add to pastry bags fitted with #2 size tips. Pastel colors might include: green, pink, yellow, and blue. Thin the icing to flood consistency icing using small amounts of warm water. Make sure to place each of the filled bags into a glass with a damp paper towel in the bottom.
- Working 1 section at a time (i.e. the top left wing), fill a color inside the black outline, using a toothpick to guide the icing to the edges if necessary. Immediately add lines or dots of other colors into the newly filled icing, then quickly and carefully run a toothpick through to create patterns. This is a wet-on-wet technique. Dragging the toothpick through dots yields the heart-shapes. The reason you must only do 1 section at a time is because the icing sets rather quickly. How fast the icing sets will depend on the humidity of the room and whether there's a draft.
- Allow the cookies to dry uncovered, at room temperature, at least overnight or up to 24 hours before packaging.
- Store the dry cookies in a single layer at room temperature in an airtight container.
Notes
Easy Royal Icing recipe HERE
Cookie recipe source: Adapted from The Way the Cookie Crumbles
Design source: Adapted from Sweetopia
You're Gonna Bake It After All
bakeitafterall.com