Marbled Sugar Cookies
These no-spread sugar cookies are soft, a little bit nutty and delicious! They're perfect for decorating with royal icing or buttercream or even making sandwich cookies filled with jam!
Ingredients
For the Cookies
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup almond flour replace with regular flour if allergic
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
For the Royal Icing
- 2 lbs powdered sugar
- 3 Tbsp meringue powder
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp butter emulsion or extract
- 2/3 cup + 2 Tbsp water
- gel food coloring of choice
Instructions
For the Cookies
- In a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, place ½ cup of unsalted butter at room temperature and 1 cup of granulated sugar. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 1-2 minutes).
- In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the 2 cups of all purpose flour, ½ cup of almond flour, 1 tsp of baking powder and ¼ tsp of salt until combined.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl of butter and sugar mixture and then add 1 egg, 1 tsp of vanilla extract and ¼ tsp of almond extract. Mix until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Do not overmix.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and bring it together by hand until it looks like a homogenous dough.
- Place the dough onto the parchment paper you will use to bake the cookies and roll out to ¼ inch thickness.
- Use your desired cookie cutter to cut out the cookie shapes. Remove the excess dough from around the shapes.
- Combine the excess dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out again to ¼ inch thickness. Cut out the remaining shapes and place on the parchment paper.
- Once all cookies have been cut out and place on the parchment paper, place the parchment paper onto the baking sheet that you will use to bake later on.
- Refrigerate the cookies for just 30 minutes. Cookies should feel firm to the touch before placing in the oven.
- Towards the end of the 30 minutes of chill time, preheat the oven to 350℉ (roughly 180℃)
- Remove the cookies from the refrigerator and bake for 10 minutes.**
- Allow the cookies to cool completely.
For the Royal Icing
- Place 1, 2lb bag of powdered sugar and 3 tbsp of meringue powder into a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low until combined.
- Add 1 tbsp of vanilla extract and 2 tsp of butter emulsion or extract and continue to mix on low.
- Slowly pour in the ⅔ cup + 2 tbsp of water a bit at a time while continuing to mix. The mixture will be lumpy at first but will smooth out over time.
- Increase the speed to medium/high once all water has been incorporated and mix for about 30 more seconds.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all ingredients are combined. Optionally, at this point add some white gel food coloring to reach your desired shade of white.
- Mix one more time then separate out into two small mixing bowls, about ½ cup of royal icing into each bowl. Cover the main white icing with plastic wrap or a damp towel and set aside.
- Color each bowl of icing to your desired shades for marbling and place into piping bags.***
- Drizzle some of each color into the main white icing and swirl the colors together using a toothpick.
- Dip the completely cooled cookies face down into the marbled icing and shake off any excess icing.
- Repeat this process with all of the cookies, adding more colored icing and swirling with a toothpick after every few cookies. Allow all cookies to dry completely (1-2 hours) before enjoying!
Notes
*the yield may very depending on the size of the shape you cut out
**10 minutes of bake time ensures that the cookies will still be soft once cooled. You may adjust the bake time to your preference of cookie texture!
***If you don’t have piping bags you can easily just drop a few spoonfuls of the colored royal icing into the white icing and swirl with a toothpick or knife.