Sugar Cookies

Don't these look delicious?!

My cousin graduated from college this past weekend, and we were planning an outdoor party. Now, usually I would get really creative and make a fondant covered cake, but, as I said, this was an outdoor party. I didn't think a cake...outdoors...in Houston would be all that ideal. So, I decided to resort to something more weather friendly and still fun and creative.

I've always wanted to make sugar cookies that were cute and had great icing with the perfect consistency. I've finally found it! I got a little inspiration from Bakerella's Sugar Cookie post from last September. I found a recipe online that I thought would be best and fairly easy. Click here for the Sugar Cookies recipe that I used.

I loved that I learned how much easier it is to roll out sugar cookie dough if you do the following:

1. Lay out parchment paper or wax paper and sprinkle flour across the paper.
2. Place sugar cookie dough on the paper.
3. Sprinkle more flour across the top of the sugar cookie dough.
4. Lay down a second piece of parchment paper or wax paper on top of the sugar cookie dough.
5. Use a rolling pin to spread out the cookie dough.

Once the cookie dough is 1/8" thick, you can cut out the shapes that you want. As you can tell, I was using numbers, letters, and flowers! I used my container of 100 cookie cutters to choose from in deciding what shapes I wanted to make.

When I was ready to make the white icing, I turned to my Cooking Light Dessert Cookbook. There was a cookie recipe in there that has the following icing recipe, and I love the flavor of this icing because it has lemon juice in it! It makes a great refreshing flavor for summer.

Lemon Icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon fat-free milk
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Food coloring (optional)
Assorted sugar sprinkles (optional)

Combine powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon milk, lemon juice, and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in food coloring, if desired. Spread about 2 teaspoons of the icing over each cookie, or place icing in a small zip-top plastic bag. Snip a tiny hole in one corner, and drizzle icing over cookies. Sprinkle with assorted sugar sprinkles, if desired.

As you can tell, I also had some black icing. I bought some Wilton Ready-To-Use Icing Tubes to decorate with black icing. That icing actually tastes really good! I also bought some sprinkles and used those on various cookies as I decorated.

Clearly the graduate loves them!