These Christmas Lights Sugar Cookies are a bit out of my cookie baking comfort zone. I tend to stay away from any holiday cookies that use royal icing — I don’t usually have the patience for decorating cookies so I lean toward drop cookies for most of the ones I make.

But this year, I figured it was time to try a fairly easy decorated holiday cookie – Christmas Lights Sugar Cookies!

These sugar cookies are topped with royal icing and then are decorated with strings of Christmas lights which are made with black icing and mini M&M’s.

The resulting Christmas Lights Sugar Cookies are colorful, fun, and oh so tasty!

Ingredients (makes approximately 2 dozen cookies)

Sugar Cookies:

1 1/2 cups flour, plus more for dusting
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 egg yolks (reserve your egg whites!)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Royal Icing:

4 cups powdered sugar
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon almond extract (can substitute vanilla extract to make nut free)

Decorations:

2 tubes of black writing icing (paid link)
Mini M&M’s (paid link) – the blue bag

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Separate your egg whites and egg yolks. Reserve the egg whites for your icing.

Add the butter and sugar to a separate bowl and beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.

Stir in the egg yolks and vanilla extract until fully combined.

Slowly mix in the flour mixture to the butter sugar mixture until just combined.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Sprinkle your clean countertop with flour, then turn the dough out onto your countertop.

Form the dough until a ball and press into a disk. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to 1/4″ thickness.

Using a 2 1/4″ biscuit cutter (paid link) or similarly sized cookie cutter, cut out as many cookies as you can.

Add the cookies to a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat (paid link).

Take your remaining dough and form it back into ball and then roll to 1/4″ thickness. Cut out more cookies and place on a cookie sheet. You should end up with 24 to 30 cookies.

When your oven is preheated, add your cookies to the oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies begin to brown ever so slightly.

Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then move to a wire rack to cool completely.

When your cookies are completely cooled, make your royal icing.

Add the egg whites to a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until frothy.

Add in the almond extract and slowly mix in the confectioners’ sugar until fully combined. If the mixture feels too thin, add in more confectioners’ sugar one tablespoon at a time until it’s thick enough to spread on a cookie and not run.

Add the icing to a zip top bag and snip off the very zip of one of the bottom corners (you want it pretty small so you have control of how much comes out).

Squeeze some of the royal icing onto each cookie and use an offset spatula (paid link) to fill in the cookie.

Set the cookies aside and let dry overnight (royal icing needs a good 8+ hours to fully dry).

The next day, pipe thin black lines onto your cookies – you can have them cris cross, swoop down, or however else you think a string of lights should look!

Press mini M&M’s onto the lines standing up so they resemble Christmas lights from above, then let dry. For more stability, feel free to press gently into the hardened royal icing to keep the M&M’s standing up.

How cute are these Christmas Lights Sugar Cookies?

I love how the colorful M&M’s make the cookie so festive without too much decorating effort!

These Christmas Lights Sugar Cookier are going to make such a great addition to my Christmas cookie baking this year!