Frosting Christmas Cookies

March 23, 2012Katie

I had intended on posting this the day after I posted the Holiday Sugar Cookie recipe.

This is our frosting recipe for the cookies. It’s really easy and makes a lot – I make a double batch of the cookie recipe each year and this is more than enough frosting for a double batch. If you make a single batch, halve this recipe.

Start by putting one stick (1/2 cup) of butter into a mixing bowl. It’s best to use it close to room temperature so you don’t get lumps in your frosting.

Next, sift up one two pound bag of powdered sugar.

Add one cup of powdered sugar into the mixing bowl.

And cream the two together. Add one more cup of powdered sugar into the bowl and mix it in.

This will be pretty thick so measure out about one-half a cup of milk and drizzle a little of it in while mixing.

Then continually add powdered sugar and milk until all the powdered sugar is used.

You don’t want the frosting too thick so it’s gloppy like this…

You want it smoother and more spreadable like this.

Now we need to make some colors. Take four bowls, or more, depending on how many colors you get. I always make at least 5 – white, yellow, red, blue and green.

Take some smaller bowls and spoon your white frosting into them.

Take one of your bowls and one color of food coloring. You can buy either the liquid kind of food coloring, or there are now gel food colorings, which are a little less messy. I still prefer the drops.

I am using red here. I like my colors to be brighter than pastel so I add about 8-10 drops per bowl.

Mix it up to check the color.

Red is tough to get truly red, so this will do.

Take 3 more bowls and add your blue, green and yellow.

If you don’t have squeeze bottles, no worries! You can use spoons and toothpicks and still make some really cute cookies! But this year, we bought some very inexpensive bottles at our local restaurant supply ($.78/each).

It’s a little tough to get the frosting into the bottles. We tried various ways and this way seemed to work best (thanks to Mr. Wonderful and his ingenious mind).

Take the frosting and spoon it into a plastic baggie that zips shut. To make it easy to spoon in, push the baggie down into a drinking glass.

Then just scoop the frosting right in.

Then cut off the corner of the baggie and squeeze it into the bottle.

Do this with all your colors.

Don’t forget that you will need white!

Now cover your table with wax paper.

I look for all kinds of sprinkle decorations. Look for colored sugars, silver balls (which are pretty but you typically can’t eat), and and all kinds of colored little tiny sprinkle balls.