Sugar Cookies

So I'm a member of a baking community (you're shocked, aren't you) and one of the members on there made the most amazing looking sugar cookies. I've never made them before because I'm not a huge fan of biscuits as I don't really like hard crunchy things. These, however, have remained soft enough for me, while still being biscuity and crunchy. God bless Pioneer Woman for this perfect recipe. I can't remember whether she added almond extract to hers, but I'm going through a nut thing at the moment and so I did. If you like almonds, add some extract. It makes life that little bit shinier :)


The icing is simply royal icing (2 eggs whites, 2 tsp lemon juice, enough icing sugar to make the right consistency, about 3 1/2 cups for this I think) with a tsp of almond extract thrown in. I wasn't kidding when I said I was going through a nut phase.

Usually the 'correct' method of icing sugar cookies is to make a thick icing, pipe an outline and then thin the icing down enough to 'flood' the cookie. I completely ignored this as a) it seemed too much faff and b) the original sugar cookie-r recommended not doing it. So I pretty much just piped away with a medium consistency icing. It occasionally spilled off the edge, but that was completely my own fault as I got over enthusiastic.

So, sugar cookies. Another phase I think I'll be going through soon! The only problem is that I halved the Pioneer Woman's recipe and I *still* got something ridiculous like 30 or 40 cookies. Maybe it's the size I was doing them. Maybe I rolled them a bit thin. Or maybe that gorgeous recipe yields a huge amount of cookies!