Let’s kick off December with a chocolate twist on traditional holiday sugar cookies, shall we??
When I made these I sadly did not have cookie cutters. To get them all perfectly round and even, I used the screw-on rim of a mason jar. Much easier to pop them out than using the rim of a glass!
For the toppings I used some chocolate sprinkles, some crushed peppermint sprinkles, and holiday-themed sprinkles that came in one of those sprinkle canisters with six different kinds of sprinkles inside.
To decorate with the royal icing, I started by piping a circle around the top of each cookie and then flooded the circle with more royal icing. I did not thin my flooding icing enough for it to properly “flood” so I ended up spreading a lot of it with a frosting spatula, but it turned out just as well! If you don’t have any narrow frosting tips, a plastic bag with a very small hole snipped at the corner works fine here.
I also considered adding a drop or two of peppermint extract to the icing but decided against it for this batch. If you give that a go, add it ONE DROP at a time and taste it each time before adding more. Peppermint extract is one of the fastest ways to ruin something if you’re not careful. It will go quickly from minty icing to toothpaste.
These came out deliciously light and crumbly, like Lofthouse cookies without the chemical flavor. Part of the reason for that is the use of cake flour instead of all-purpose flour. Cake flour has a lower protein content which results in a lighter texture. Most grocery stores carry cake flour in the baking aisle, and it’s not priced much higher than AP flour. Look for it in a box.
Also be sure not to rush the chilling. I made the dough at night and let it chill until morning. When I took it out of the fridge I let it rest on the counter for ten minutes or so until it was pliable with my rolling pin. If you start in the morning and bake in the afternoon, I’d say a two-hour chill time is ideal.
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