Simple soft sugar cookies and icing recipe for delightful decorating

Hi Bold Bakers, what kind of baker would I be if I didn't show you how to make a quintessential holiday classic, a soft sugar cookie. These are those cookies that are nice and thick and soft and chewy, they've got frosting on the top and then they're easy to decorate. Make sure to stick around until the end and I'm gonna show you how to decorate them perfect for your holidays. So this recipe can be found on my website and I want to make sure you head over to BiggerBolderBaking.com and check out my holiday baking headquarters. Every recipe you're gonna need for the holiday season is right there, from fancy desserts to all your cookie recipes. So let's get started with our cookie dough. This is a creaming method for a cookie dough so it's really important to have room temperature butter, I leave mine out overnight so it gets nice and soft. Into our butter we are going to add in our granulated sugar. So one of the reasons I love this recipe is that you don't need a stand mixer or an electric hand mixer, you can do it all by hand and if you've got little hands in the house ready to help this is the perfect recipe for them. So with your whisk just mix it all together. So this creaming method gives you that lovely kind of cakey cookie that you get from a soft sugar cookie so it's not a crispy cookie that you bite into, it's nice and soft. So all you want to do is just cream this until it's nice and soft and kind of pale in color so around 2-3 minutes. This can be your workout for the day. See this is why it's so important to have your butter at room temperature because you're doing it all by hand so it just makes life so much easier. So when this is lovely and creamed just like this, we're going to add in our eggs but we're going to do it one at a time and then whisk in. The reason we add them one at a time is that the eggs can curdle your mix. So you just add it in one at a time, whisk it in, just like this, and then you can add in your other one. So once your eggs are combined we're going to add in our vanilla extract which is really important in this recipe because it is a vanilla flavored cookie. So don't be shy with the vanilla extract. So I just want to remind you to use extract rather than vanilla essence because extract actually comes from vanilla pods and it's a much better quality. Whisk that in. And then we're going to talk about our dry ingredients. So here I've got a bowl of flour. Into this I'm going to add in my baking powder to give our cookies a little bit of a rise and the baking powder is what gives you that cakey cookie. Not baking soda, powder and a little bit of salt because all baking needs salt. And then just give that a mix together. Those of you who watch Bigger Bolder Baking you'll know that I always mix my wet and my dry ingredients separately. You do this so that with your dry ingredients your raising agent gets mixed like well throughout rather than in one lump in your dough. So just make a habit of doing these separately. And then once they're mixed, add one into the other. And then with a whisk, just bring your dough together. And there is our dough. how simple it is. I'm just gonna get a very festive spatula, and then just bring it together like that. So now here's what you want to do chill your dough, because you're going to want to have it nice and cold so you can scoop it. What I like to do is actually push it into logs. I just find that this gives you a much better shape on your cookie. So you've got two options. You can chill it in a log form, or you can put it into the fridge like this and scoop tablespoon scoops. So to do the log, just make kind of like a sausage, just like this. to the thickness that you want your cookies, roll it over in the cling wrap, just roll it on the countertop and you should get what's kind of like a tight sausage. Then you get the shape that you want, which is nice and round. So now your dough is ready to go into the fridge, you want to chill it for a minimum of an hour just so it's nice and cold and you can slice it. It also can be left in the fridge for a few days and then can just cut it and bake it whenever you want it. As for right now while our dough is chilling we're gonna make our frosting. Okay so let's talk frosting. This is a really simple recipe and just like the cookie dough we're gonna do it all by hand. So into a nice big bowl we're gonna add in our powdered sugar. We're gonna add in some room temperature butter our vanilla extract for nice flavor. And then I'm gonna start whisking it in with a little bit of milk. You just add a little bit of milk to begin with to bring it together. Because Because if you add too much milk you end up with a very runny frosting, and what we want here is a nice thick frosting that we can decorate with. So this is nice and thick, I'm going to add a splash more milk just to loosen it up a little bit and make it easy for me to decorate. The reason that you just add a little bit by little bit is because you can always add in a little bit more but you can't take it out. So there we go, that's what we want, a nice thick frosting, delicious, perfect to decorate with. is your base frosting what you can do is color it any color that you want you can even divide it up and color it different colors but we're going to do that later on right now i'm just going to set it over to the side and we're going to go check on our cookies so it's been a few hours i'm going to take my cookie dough from the fridge and over to the table here i have two trays lined with parchment paper just getting them ready to go now unwrap your cookie dough and with a sharp knife not a serrated knife. Cut your cookies to around a quarter of an inch thick. This dough will make a lot of cookies. Place them on the tray and then give them a little bit of space in between the cookies. Just because when they bake they will spread out a little bit. Our cookies are good to go now let's get them into the oven. Bake your cookies off at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius for roughly 12 to 14 minutes or until a very light golden brown. I want you to stick around because we're about to decorate them. So our cookies are out of the oven and as you can see they're a light golden brown they really only take a few minutes to bake. Over here I divided my frosting into three bowls and I'm gonna color one red, green, and blue. You can color them any color you like. So I've got my whole decorating station set up, I've got my colored frosting, I've got my cookies, and I have my sprinkles. This way of decorating is really simple but also a lot of fun. So pick a color of your choice, and using your spoon, just spread the frosting, a nice thick layer on your cookies. I'm gonna go with green, and some Christmas tree sprinkles. So another great Christmas color is red, so I'm gonna top a few with my red frosting. Just with the back of a spoon, spread it all the way around. You don't have to get fancy or technical here. And then of course, lash on the sprinkles. Dollop on your blue frosting, and we're gonna keep these ones white and blue for our friends celebrating Hanukkah. And then we're gonna sprinkle with white snowflakes. This is my kind of decorating, using the back of a spoon, nothing fancy, a little bit of colored frosting, and some festive sprinkles. So now I'm gonna show you a little bit more of an intricate design that really makes these cookies pop. I'm gonna fill a piping bag with green frosting. So starting out kind of narrow, do a squiggly line and as you go down, get broader and broader. As you can see we're creating a Christmas tree. You do not have to be a perfect decorator to do this. Then take a few little deco pearls, red ones or yellow ones, and pop them the very top of the tree. Look at that. So sweet, super simple. I'm pretty happy with how these cookies turned out considering I'm not a cookie decorator, But I just think they look very festive. So I want to see your photos of your cookie decorations on social media. So at us at Bigger Bolder Baking, we might share your photos in our feed. As for right now, I'm ready to try some Christmas cookies. The beauty of these cookies is that they're nice and thick and soft and with the right amount of frosting. It's just like the perfect package and then some colorful sprinkles on top. They're perfect for the holiday season. So right now I want you to go to BiggerBolderBaking.com and check out our holiday baking headquarters, everything you'll need for the holiday season from cookies to fancy desserts and much much more. And I'll see you guys back here again really soon.