Christmas Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing – Snowmen and Snowflakes

I baked and decorated a lot of sugar cookies this year!  I love the way sugar cookies look decorated with royal icing.  They can be elegant or whimsical and this sugar cookie recipe is so good!!  Not only does it taste fantastic but the dough is so easy to work with.  The cookies are baked at a high temperature for a short period of time so they don’t spread and lose their shape.

It’s hard to believe I started decorating cookies 2 years ago … time flies!  I’ve learned a lot about decorating, picked up valuable tips, and am much quicker since I first started decorating.  There are great sources of inspiration and tutorials on the internet.  A good place to start is here at The Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle.  She has numerous tutorials and tips and is the “Queen of Sugar Cookies”!  Seriously, her cookies are amazing.

One of the best tips I picked up is that you don’t always have to make two consistencies of icing for flooding and piping,  And you do not have to wait to let the outline dry before flooding your cookie.  In fact, if after piping your outline and you flood your cookie immediately you create a seamless cookie which is much more attractive!  The more cookies you do, the better you get!  Go ahead … give it a try … you’ll love the results!