Description
Using your choice of cookie cutters, you can enjoy these soft-baked vanilla bean sugar cookies as any shape you want. You can leave them plain or decorate with the vanilla bean buttercream listed below or try royal icing or this easy cookie icing instead.
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled), plus more as needed for rolling and work surface
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (12 Tbsp; 170g)Â unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- seeds scraped from 1 whole vanilla bean*
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Vanilla Bean Buttercream
- 3/4 cup (12 Tbsp; 170g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- seeds scraped from 1/2 of a vanilla bean*
- 3 cups (360g) confectioners’ sugar, sifted (sift after measuring)
- 3 Tablespoons (45ml) heavy cream, half-and-half, or whole milk, at room temperature
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- salt, to taste
- optional: gel food coloring for tinting
- optional: sprinkles for decorating
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a handheld or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together on high speed for 1 minute. Add the vanilla bean seeds and beat again until combined and butter is creamy, about 1-2 more minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl and beat again as needed to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat on low speed until combined. Dough will be a bit soft. If the dough seems too soft and sticky for rolling, add 1 more Tablespoon of flour.
- Divide the dough into 2 equal portions. Place each portion on a piece of lightly floured parchment paper or a lightly floured silicone baking mat. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness. Use more flour if the dough seems too sticky. The rolled-out dough can be any shape, as long as it is evenly 1/4-inch thick.
- Lightly dust one of the rolled-out doughs with flour. Place a piece of parchment on top. (This prevents sticking.) Place the 2nd rolled-out dough on top. Cover with plastic wrap or aluminum foil and then refrigerate for at least 1-2 hours and up to 2 days.
- Once chilled, preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line 2-3 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Carefully remove the top dough piece from the refrigerator. If it’s sticking to the bottom, run your hand under it to help remove it. Using a cookie cutter, cut the dough into shapes. Re-roll the remaining dough and continue cutting until all is used. Repeat with 2nd piece of dough. (Note: It doesn’t seem like a lot of dough, but you get a lot of cookies from the dough scraps you re-roll.)
- Arrange cookies on baking sheets 3 inches apart. Bake for 11-12 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. If your oven has hot spots, rotate the baking sheet halfway through bake time. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
- Make the buttercream frosting: With a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and vanilla bean seeds together on medium speed until butter is creamy, about 2 minutes. Add confectioners’ sugar, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. Beat on low speed for 30 seconds and then increase to medium-high speed and beat for 2 full minutes. Taste. Add a pinch of salt if frosting is too sweet. To color the frosting, divide the frosting between 2-3 bowls (or however many colors of frosting you want). Stir in 1-2 tiny drops of gel food coloring (or more, depending on your desired color).
- Frost the cooled cookies: You can decorate the cookies with a knife, icing spatula, or use a piping bag and piping tip. Top with sprinkles, if desired. In the pictured cookies, I filled a piping bag with spoonfuls of both green and uncolored frosting and used Ateco 30 piping tip. Pipe hearts as the 3 leaves and a line as the stem.
- Frosting does not harden or crust very much, though you could gently stack 1 frosted cookie on top of another, but expect some slight squishing. Store frosted cookies covered at room temperature for up to 1 day or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Store unfrosted cookies covered at room temperature for up to 5 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Freezing Instructions: Plain or frosted sugar cookies freeze well up to 3 months. Thaw in the refrigerator or at room temperature. You can also freeze the cookie dough for up to 3 months before rolling it out. Prepare the dough through step 3, divide in half, flatten both halves into a disk as we do with pie crust, wrap each in plastic wrap, and then freeze. To thaw, thaw the disks in the refrigerator and then bring to room temperature for about 1 hour. Roll out the dough as directed in step 4 and then chill rolled out dough in the refrigerator for 45 minutes – 1 hour before cutting into shapes and baking.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) |Â Rolling Pin or Adjustable Rolling Pin | Cookie Cutters (I use the small & medium from this Shamrock Cookie Cutter Set) | Baking Sheets | Â Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Optional Gel Food Coloring such as Americolor Leaf Green | Buttercream Piping Tip such as Ateco 30 (what I used in pictured cookies) or Wilton 30 | Piping Bags (Disposable or Reusable)
- Room Temperature: Room temperature butter is essential. If the dough is too sticky, your butter may have been too soft. Room temperature butter is actually cool to the touch. You can read more about it in this room temperature butter post. Room temperature egg is preferred so it’s quickly and evenly mixed into the cookie dough.
- Vanilla Bean: This recipe calls for the seeds from 1 whole vanilla bean in the cookie dough and from 1/2 of a vanilla bean in the frosting. (For extra flavor, feel free to use 1 whole bean in the frosting too.) To get the seeds out of a vanilla bean, use a small knife to cut the vanilla bean lengthwise and then use the dull side of the knife to scrape out the vanilla seeds.
- Using Vanilla Bean Paste Instead: If you have vanilla bean paste, you can use that instead of vanilla bean. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste when you add the vanilla extract. If you want to replace the vanilla extract AND vanilla bean with vanilla bean paste, add 1 Tablespoon paste when you would add the vanilla extract.
- Can I Tint the Cookie Dough? If you want to skip the icing but are still itching for a green or other colored dessert, you can add a couple drops of gel food coloring when you add the dry ingredients/flour mixture.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.