Tutorial Tuesday: Simple Spiced Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing Detail!

Every winter time, as soon as the slightest hint of Christmas shows up, we excitedly whip up batches upon batches of our go to ‘gingerbread’ cookies in a variety of fun and festive shapes! Our own recipe is a little different to the traditional gingerbread cookie fare as we prefer thinner cookies with more of a crunch so instead of adding bicarbonate of soda we, over the years, have adapted our standard sugar cookie recipe into the delightfully thin, crisp and light gingerbread variant we create every Christmas! 

Simple gingerbread spiced sugar cookies recipe…

Ingredients and materials needed to make the cookies… (creates approx. 25-30 cookies depending on size)

• 200g softened butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon allspice
• 1 tablespoon nutmeg
• 2 tablespoons ground ginger
• 400g plain flour (plus extra to dust)
• 1 lightly beaten egg
• Snowflake cookie cutters
• Rolling pin
• Cookie baking tray
• Silicone matt or parchment paper
• angled palette knife

Step 1:

Pre-heat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4 and prepare a flat baking tray with either a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

Step 2:

Add your syrup, spices and sugar together in the bowl of a stand-up mixer. If you like darker and spicer cookies add some more to taste!

Step 3:

Add in the softened butter and cream your ingredients together on medium speed.

Step 4:

Once incorporated the lightly beaten egg along with the flour and mix on medium speed once again. Try not to overmix or your cookies will be more likely to spread when baking!

Step 5:

Quickly mould your dough into a ball, wrap with cling film and leave to chill in a fridge for 1 hour.

Step 6:

When ready knead the dough a little and roll out onto a flour dusted surface before cutting out your cookie shapes!

Step 7: Carefully lift your cut cookies and place onto a baking tray with a palette knife. Set in the fridge for 30 mins.

Step 8: 

When ready pop into your pre-heated oven for approx. 10-15 minutes or until the edges are a golden brown. Remove and leave to cool on a wire rack!

Now it’s time to show you how to pipe out wonderfully sweet (pun fully intended) royal icing patterns onto your freshly baked and cooled snowflake cookies! This take a little practice and should be relatively pain free, however, if you run into a spot of bother working with royal icing you’ll still be left with pretty and tasty cookies if you either leave your cookies plain or simply smothered with royal icing and dotted with fun sprinkles!

Ingredients and materials needed for our quick royal icing recipe… (enough to ice 12-25 cookies depending on how much is used per cookie)

• Whites from 1 medium egg
• 188g icing/confectioner’s sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice (and extra to wipe down your bowl and whisk attachment)
• Kitchen scales
• Stand-up mixer with whisk attachment and metal bowl
• Small round writing piping tip
• Disposable piping bag

Step 1: 

Wipe down the bowl of your stand up mixer with lemon juice along with your whisk attachment.

Step 2:

Add the whites of 1 medium egg to the bowl and whisk on high speed until white and frothy.

Step 3:

Add in the icing/confectioner’s sugar and mix until incorporated.

Step 4:

Finally add in the lemon juice. You need your royal icing to be the consistency of runny honey so add a little more lemon juice if you find your icing too thick.

To pipe royal icing detail onto your snowflake cookies…

Step 1:

Add your royal icing to a piping bag fitted with a small round piping tip.

Step 2:

Beginning in the very centre of your cookie carefully pipe lines out to the tip. Make sure that you don’t touch the cookie with the royal icing the entire time. You want to start by touching the cookie and lightly piping out a little icing before lifting the royal icing and bag off the cookie. Keep pressingly and piping icing out but move above the cookie so that the icing falls tidily onto the surface!

Step 3:

Add smaller details in by lightly piping out small dots, lines and teardrops around the edges of the snowflake!

Step 4: 

To add a little sparkle sprinkle granulated sugar over the still wet royal icing. If you’d like a more shimmery look wait until your icing is full dry (this make take from 4-6 hours) and carefully dust the icing with white lustre dust.

You should now be left with a plate full of incredibly cosy and festive looking snowflake cookies (that’s if you’ve not eaten them all…). We’ve bagged up ours to give away as extra little gifts this Christmas (sugar cookies generally last around 4-6 weeks depending on humidity) with gold ribbon and pretty gift tags! We’ve even baked extra spiced sugar cookies featuring small ribbon holes punched into the tops so that we can add then to the Christmas tree later on!