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