Spread this delectable fruit butter on warm bread, toast, or scones, or use it in sandwiches or on sponge cakes. An attractive technique to keep the flavor of nearby plums so you can enjoy them all year.
| Prep Time: | 1 hr |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 2 hrs 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs 25 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 24 cookies |
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 1 ¼ cups white sugar
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
- 2 egg whites
- 3 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice, or as needed (Optional)
- red food coloring
Instructions
- Cream 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer. Add white sugar and lemon zest and mix well. Mix in eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. Mix in 1/2 of the flour until combined. Mix in remaining flour until dough comes together.
- Shape dough with your hands into a thick rectangle. Press flat and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Dust a work surface with flour and roll out dough into a thin circle. Cut out heart shapes and arrange cut-out cookies on the prepared baking sheets.
- Bake in the preheated oven until lightly browned, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove hearts from baking sheets carefully and transfer to wire racks. Cool completely, about 15 minutes.
- Beat egg whites in a bowl until frothy. Beat in confectioners’ sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until stiff peaks form. Add lemon juice to thin out the mixture. Add more lemon juice for runnier icing. Divide icing into small bowls and color with red food coloring in different shades of red or pink, keeping a portion of the icing white. Cover with a damp kitchen towel at all times so it won’t dry out.
- Decorate as you like using different techniques. For the flood technique, use runny royal icing in a piping bag with a small round #2 tip and pipe a line around the edge of the cookies. Fill in the center, evenly distributing the icing with a scriber tool.
- For hearts, add dots of a different color onto the wet icing and drag the scriber tool downwards through the dots. For lips, add an oval shape onto the wet icing and shape the oval into lips with the scriber tool.
- For feathers or patterns, pipe a line around the edge, then add stripes in different colors. Drag the scriber tool down through the stripes. For a marbled effect, pipe lines of different colors across a base layer, then drag the scriber tool up and down through the lines. Allow the icing to set completely.
- Baking time is often shorter after the first batch of cookies.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 223 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 34 g |
| Cholesterol | 38 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 2 g |
| Saturated Fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 12 mg |
| Sugars | 26 g |
| Fat | 9 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
i was disappointed. As written, the mixture turned into a paste. I added a second table spoon of corn syrup and two tablespoons of milk to get it fluid enough. Using a sugar cookie recipe to make the egg shaped oversized cookies, one mix of the icing didn’t cover all the cookies. So, I ended up with 10 colored cookies and a second batch of icing to cover the last three cookies and make the egg shell on the Peep’s cookies.
I’m an experienced baker and I don’t understand why these cookies all ran into each other. I also didn’t understand why there was no baking soda or salt. I don’t think because I didn’t use parchment paper. I wanted to make decorated eggs for Easter. Not sure if they will even be improved with icing.
as soon as i put the cookies in the oven the melted
I really liked the cookies, but when I took the dough out of the fridge, it was too hard to shape. I did not make the frosting, because it looked to hard, but the cookies themselves were good. The cookies looked a bit weird and were soft when they came out of the oven, but they hardened in five minutes time.
I made this so many times! These cookies are easy, simple, beautiful and delicious!
Love the video. very well made.
This is the only demonstration on the whole All Recipes that shows you how to decorate a cookie with Royal Icing. Thank you it was very helpful.