Sugar Cookie Greeting Cards

October-December 2021: Sugar Cookie Greeting Cards

Teaser: Tired of boring greeting cards? Why not try making your own edible ones!

Want to send winter greetings to friends and family, but looking for a fun, eco-friendly alternative to paper cards? Why not bake some edible greeting cards? You’ll need access to an oven in order to make these, but they’re a fun project that anyone is bound to love - especially while they’re munching on it! You can even freeze extra dough for later and make more greeting cookies another day!

Recipe makes about 4 dozen 2 inch cookies or about 2 dozen larger cookies.

Supplies Needed for Baking:

• Oven

• Refrigerator space

• Rolling pin

• Counter space

• A butter or frosting knife

• Whisk, handheld mixer, or stand mixer

• Baking sheet(s)

• Oven mitts

• Parchment paper (optional)

• Cookie cutters (optional)

Supplies for the Cookies:

• 3 ½ cups of flour (gluten free or regular is fine!)

• 1 tbsp baking soda

• 1 cup softened (not melted) butter

• 2 cups sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Supplies for the Royal Icing

• 3-3/4 cups powdered sugar

• 3 tablespoons meringue powder

• 2-5 tablespoons warm water

• Edible food writing pens

Directions:

1. Place your softened butter into a large mixing bowl and add your sugar and vanilla. Mix together until the sugar is thoroughly incorporated into your butter - a fork or hand mixer works really well for this!
   

2. Once your butter and sugar are combined, add in your eggs and stir together.

3. Your ingredients should be a fairly sticky consistency after stirring it all together, at which point you can add in your baking soda and slowly add your flour, stirring it all up until all the flour is incorporated and the dough is sticky, but holds its shape.
   

4. Refrigerate your dough for at least 2-3 hours, but preferably overnight before continuing to roll, cut, and bake it.

5. When the dough is nice and cold and you’re ready to start rolling and cutting out your cookies, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

6. While your oven is preheating, divide your cookie dough into manageable chunks, sprinkle a little bit of flour over your counter or table and rolling pin, and roll the dough out to about ⅛ - ¼ inch thickness.
   

7. Once it’s rolled out, you can either use cookie cutters or a butter knife to cut out the shapes of your greeting cards. These can be any shape and size you’d like, so long as they are all a relatively even thickness for baking.
   

8. Place your cookies 1-2 inches apart on a baking sheet and pop them into the oven for about 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden. Then remove them and set them on either a wire cooling rack or other heat-safe surface to cool completely. Be sure not to put them in the fridge to speed up the process or they may become tough or brittle.
   

9. Once your cookies are fully cooled (not even a little bit warm!), spread icing over them and allow it to dry completely. I like to (carefully) dip the front side of my cookies into the icing to make sure they get evenly coated, but you can also use a spoon or knife to spread the icing on.
   

10. When the icing is dry, use your edible writing pens to decorate your cookies to your heart’s content and give them away to friends and family!
    

Icing Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine powdered sugar, meringue powder and water. As a note, add your water slowly - you can always add more water, but you can’t remove excess water!
   

2. Use a whisk, hand mixer, or stand mixer to beat on low speed just until combined, then beat at high speed for 4-5 minutes or until stiff peaks form.
   

3. Add additional water if need be to get your icing to a stiff yogurt consistency.

4. When not using your icing, keep your icing bowl covered at all times with a damp cloth. If it loses its texture, you can beat it again with your whisk or mixer at high speed to restore the texture.

Tips:

• This can be done with any kind of frosted cookie, as long as you use royal icing. I personally love to do them with sugar or shortbread cookies as well!

• Excess dough can be refrigerated or frozen for later use or you can reduce the recipe to fit the amount of cookies you need.

• If you want some extra flavor, you can experiment by adding some cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest or other spices into the dough or by adding a tablespoon or two of lemon juice instead of water into the royal icing. My personal favorite is 2-3 tbsp of chamomile tea (instead of water) into the icing and 1 tsp of edible lavender flowers and 2 tbsp of lemon zest into the dough.