How to make stunning Snowflake Cookies with the easiest, no-fail recipe that requires just one bowl and no chilling. Decorate with royal icing.

Snowflake Cookies: Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• This is a 1-bowl recipe – no one wants to be doing loads of dishes over the holidays.
• You only need 5 basic ingredients to whip these beauties up.
• The “reverse creaming” method of adding the butter directly to the flour mixture ensures cookies that hold their shape beautifully and are lovely and tender. 
• No chill. (Just like my kids, ha.) Most cut-out decorated cookies require a 1-hour (or more) chill time before rolling and cutting. The ingredient proportions and technique of this recipe make that step unnecessary. Cookies faster, yay!

Snowflake Cookie Ingredients

Here are some notes on a couple of the standout ingredients:

• Butter: To minimize the number of ingredients to source, I used salted butter (since that’s what everyone tends to have on hand). Substitute unsalted butter if you like, and double the salt in the recipe. Adequate salt is super important to balance the flavor of this cookie.
• Flour. All-purpose flour is all you need for this recipe.
• Flavouring. Vanilla extract is what gives the cookies their classic sugar cookie flavor. I love to add the zest of one lemon in addition to make lemon snowflake cookies (and if you love lemon, you must try these Lemon Curd Cookies)..

How to Make Them

Here is the path you’ll need to take to whip up a batch of the beauties.

You’ll need to make up the dough using the reverse creaming method of adding the butter to the dry ingredients and then adding in the egg and vanilla. 

The dough will then be rolled out while soft, cut, and baked.

Once cooled, you’ll then ice them with their sweet royal icing and enjoy adding a touch of sparkle as the final step. 

Here are the instructions on how to make them:

1. First, add the flour, sugar, and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer and mix them for 30 seconds to aerate them a bit. Use a low speed for this step. 
2. Beat the butter into the flour on a slow speed with a paddle attachment and then slowly increase to a medium to high speed. The goal is to have a mixture that resembles coarse crumbs. You can also use an electric mixer for this.
3. Add in the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until the dough comes together. If the mixture hasn’t come together, dump it out onto a counter and form it into a ball with your hands. Shape it into a disk. 
4. Rest the dough for about 15 minutes so that it can hydrate.
5. While you wait, preheat the oven to 350ºF.
6. Roll the sugar cookie dough out between 2 sheets of parchment paper with a rolling pin, to a 1/3” thickness. Do this on a lightly floured surface to avoid any sticking.
7. Flour the edges of your snowflake cookie cutter and cut out the cookies. If the edges seem crumbly, then press them together until smooth again. If you struggle with a clean release from the cutters, cover the dough with plastic wrap and pop it into the freezer to chill it up a bit.
8. Bake the cookies on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet in the center of the oven. Bake 2-3″ cookies for 10 minutes or until the edges turn golden. Add a minute of bake time for every 1” larger cookie size. 
9. Transfer your cookies onto a wire rack and allow them to cool completely.

How to Decorate Snowflake Cookies With Royal Icing (The EASY WAY)

I love using a simple dunk method for flooding a cookie. It makes a beautiful, smooth, glossy icing icing that looks professional that takes 1% of the skill and effort that piping does.

1. Make royal icing. I’ve been using meringue powder to eliminate need to buy a carton of pasteurized egg whites, but if you don’t have that on hand, swap in my easy royal icing recipe.
2. Thin it out to “flood” consistency by adding water by half-teaspoonfuls until it passes the “10-second test”. The test can be done by running your spatula through the bowl of icing and counting the seconds it takes to settle back to a smooth surface. (The thicker the icing, the longer it takes to settle.) When the icing is thin enough to smooth back out in 10 seconds, it’s ready to use.
3. Dunk the cookie facedown in the icing. Do this by holding the edges, and only dipping the surface of the cookie.
4. Holding it facedown, let the excess drip back into the icing bowl, then flip the cookie over and place it on the counter.
5. Grasp the edges of the cookie and give it a quick back-and-forth shake on the counter to level out the icing.
6. Add sprinkles (or coarse sugar crystals for a sparkly effect) to the wet icing.
7. Let it dry for at least 8 hours before you pack them up.

You can alternatively use pastry bags to pipe designs onto your snowflake cookies, but keep in mind that on a 1-10 skill level of baking, decorating beautifully with royal icing is a difficulty 10. (TikTok makes it look so easy.)

Make Ahead Instructions 

Here are a few things you can do ahead of time if you like:

• You can make your royal icing up to 3 days in advance of icing the cookies. You’ll need to ensure to store the icing in an airtight container and make sure it remains in the refrigerator. 
• Prepare the cookie dough up to 3 days in advance. Roll it out first as indicated, then chill it till firm before wrapping it well with aluminum foil (easier) or plastic wrap.
• Bake up your batch of cookies ahead of icing them and freeze them until you’re ready. 

Storage Instructions 

You can store your cookies (once the icing is completely set) in an airtight container at room temperature for about a week. Freeze them for up to 3 months.

FAQs

Pro Tips and Tricks 

Here are a couple of pointers for beautiful snowflake cookies:

• Make sure your butter is lovely and soft. Here is how to get your cookies to room temperature in a jiffy.
• Best to bake your small cookies and large cookies separately if using different cookie cutter sizes as the baking time will differ.
• It’s often easiest to press the cookie cutter into the dough and then remove the dough scraps from around the cuts you made, leaving your shapes behind on the parchment paper (rather than trying to lift your shapes out of the dough).
• Allow your royal icing to set for eight hours before packing them into containers. You can eat them sooner than that, but you don’t want to crush your icing by loading the cookies up before they’re completely dry.
• After you’ve rolled it a couple of times, the butter may get softer. If you’re finding it tricky to easily lift the dough shapes pop the whole thing in the freezer for a few minutes.
• Slide a rimless baking sheet under your rolled-out dough and pop the whole thing in the freezer for a bit if you’re finding it hard to lift the shapes out.

Other Festive Recipes You Won’t Want To Miss

• Christmas pavlova recipe
• Christmas sangria
• Christmas gingerbread stars
• White chocolate candy cane Christmas

Note: the video shows just the yolk being used but I tested the recipe several times after shooting and prefer whole egg.