Easter Sugar Cookies Recipe for Easter 2024
Author: Veruska Anconitano, Award-Winning Food Travel Journalist, Sommelier & Outdoor Lover
About the author
Veruska Anconitano
Veruska is a a food travel journalist with awards to her credit, such as World Best Food Travel Journalist. She holds a certification as a sommelier and she is also an ardent lover of the outdoors. Aside from this, Veruska is a Multilingual SEO and Localization Consultant and co-owns multiple websites that cater to a global audience.
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Veruska Anconitano
Veruska is a a food travel journalist with awards to her credit, such as World Best Food Travel Journalist. She holds a certification as a sommelier and she is also an ardent lover of the outdoors. Aside from this, Veruska is a Multilingual SEO and Localization Consultant and co-owns multiple websites that cater to a global audience.
Website Linkedin Twitter
This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we may receive a small commission at no cost for you, if you purchase through these links.
This Easter Sugar Cookies Recipe will make you want to go straight to the kitchen to prepare them: they’re so easy and so cute, you will ask yourself why buying packed Easter Cookies when you can prepare yours.
These Easter cookies are very easy and quick to make but they’re a good add on to the most traditional Easter recipes and they bring joy and happiness in every home.
It is in fact a dough based on short pastry that can be flavoured to taste, and to which the typical shape of the Easter symbols is given: the egg, the lamb, the dove, the bells and so on.
This Easter Sugar Cookies Recipe is perfect if you’re into decorating: in fact, once ready and cold these Easter cookies can be decorated either using royal icing or sugar paste or even chocolate. The end result will be really unique: cookies that are beautiful to see and good to eat!
You can also have fun with the shape and flavour: you could for example pair two and stuff them with jam, spreadable cream or even mascarpone cream or whipped cream. Or even play with the tastes: prepare a cocoa based dough or half white and half brown or add some dried fruit, chocolate chips and so on.
In short, these Easter cookies are so versatile that you just need a little imagination and creativity for an excellent result.
Remember that to get a perfect shortcrust pastry it is necessary to follow a few (but necessary) rules:
- Only use cold ingredients;
- Only use cold equipment, possibly kneading the biscuits on a cold surface or inside an aluminum bowl;
- Make sure your hands are cold to work the ingredients better.
The word “cold” is fundamental when it comes to the recipe of these Easter cookies and to shortcrust pastry: the pastry is in fact characterized by the presence of a lot of butter in the dough. If the butter is processed in a hot environment, it melts and fails to shrink and blend well with the other ingredients. This is why it is necessary that the hands, the ingredients and the equipment are cold from the refrigerator and that, if we work the dough with a kneader, we take care not to overheat it with the heat of the blades.
Let’s now move on to the recipe to prepare these simple and fast Easter cookies. After the recipe, a few advice on how to decorate the cookies.
Ingredients for 30 Easter Cookies
- 250 grams of all-purpose flour (2 cups)
- 150 grams of sugar (½ cup)
- 80 grams of butter (2,82 ounces)
- 1 big egg
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1/2 tablespoon of baking powder
- 1 vanilla pod
Instructions
- In a cold bowl mix flour and butter cut into dice using only the fingertips to prevent the butter from melting too much;
- Add egg, baking powder, seeds of vanilla pod and sugar and work the dough with your hands for a few minutes to mix the ingredients;
- Once you have a smooth and soft dough, form a ball, cover it with film paper and refrigerate for 1 hour;
- Pull the dough out of the refrigerator and spread it, using a rolling pin (cold, too) on a lightly floured work surface to a maximum height of 3-4 mm;
- Cut the biscuits of the desired shape and place them on a greased and floured baking pan;
- Bake in a warm oven at 180°C for about 15 minutes or for the time necessary for the biscuits to start to brown;
- Remove the homemade cookies from the oven when they are golden on the surface;
- Leave them to cool in the same baking pan and then, once cold, decorate them by choosing one of the methods listed below.
notes
Preparation time: 1.3 hours
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Total time: 1.6 hours
How to decorate the Easter Sugar Cookies
Once ready, the Easter cookies should be cooled and can be decorated for an even more wow result. There are several ways to decorate cookies:
With the sugar paste
If you want to decorate your cookies with sugar paste, take the paste and if it is not already colored add some food coloring in it and make sure it spreads evenly. Roll the sugar paste on a hard and regular surface at the height you prefer then using the same cookie cutters you used for the cookies get the perfect shape. Spread a little bit of honey on top of your Easter cookies then lay the sugar paste that you have cut and cover the surface of the cookie. If you want to add decorations in sugar paste, proceed in the same way, always wetting the surface of the cookie with honey.
With Easter themed sugar decorations
If you want to decorate your Easter cookies with sugar, funfetti, Easter themed sugar decorations, I suggest you do it once they are cooked. Let them to cool and prepare a very fast icing by mixing icing sugar and hot water and brush one side of the cookie with it. Helping yourself with tweezers or hands, spread the decorations on the surface of the cookie to create the decoration you prefer. If you do not want to make icing, you can use honey diluted in a little hot water to get the same effect.
With royal icing
Decorating Easter cookies with royal icing requires a little more skill with decorations. The first thing to do is to prepare the royal icing by mixing egg whites, powdered sugar and lemon juice and then spread it on the cookies to create customised decorations. To color the royal icing always use food coloring. The decorations with the real ice require a lot of time to dry up, at least 8 hours, and it is necessary that the icing is not too liquid otherwise in the cooling phase it could melt completely.
With chocolate
Nothing screams Easter more than chocolate, which can be used to cover the cookies. You just have to take some dark chocolate from the eggs (or, if you do not have it, dark chocolate at least 50%) and dissolve it in a bain-marie; you can then decide to temper the chocolate for a more professional result or spread it directly on the cookies. Before the chocolate dries you can add sugar, sugar paste decorations and everything you like to make your Easter cookies even more beautiful.
The smartest way to decorate your Easter Cookies
If you do not want to decorate the cookies but you want your Easter cookies to be beautiful, you can work on the pastry: instead of leaving it natural, color it using food coloring that will allow you to get some beautiful cookies. To do this you only need to add the gel dye to the pastry dough, adjusting it according to the color you want to obtain. Remember that to get cookies of different colors, you will have to prepare several shortbread dough, each colored as you like. Remember also that in the cooking phase the colors will tend to lose liveliness so use more color than you would normally use.
Always prefer strong colors such as red, green, blue and all the various shades of these colors while paying attention with the lightest and most neutral colors such as brown, yellow and pink which in cooking could disappear or take on very unattractive tones.
- Easter Cookie Cutter – Check on Amazon
- Food Coloring – Check on Amazon
- Unbleached all-purpose flour – Check on Amazon
- Sprinkles – Check on Amazon
- A good stand mixer – Check our selection
- Cookie Tray – Check on Amazon
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