Le Finis Sugar Cookie with Royal Icing

Ingredients

• 2 cups butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1½ cups icing sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tsp orange zest
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 4½ cups flour
• coloured sugar (optional)

• Royal Icing
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 2 tbsp meringue powder
• a few drops vanilla or extract of choice
• 3½ tbsp water

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream butter and sugars (not the coloured sugar) together with a mixer until light and fluffy. Mix in egg yolks, vanilla and zest until just combined.
3. Sift together baking powder and flour. Add to wet mixture until well incorporated.
4. Form into 3 balls and let chill 30 minutes.
5. Roll out dough on a floured surface until ¼-inch thick. Cut out in desired shapes. (If you’d like to skip the royal icing stage, another option is to sprinkle the cookies with coloured sugar before baking.) Bake on a sheet pan with parchment paper for 8 to 12 minutes until just golden on the edges. Let cool.
7. For the icing, put dry ingredients into mixer. Add extract to water and pour in while mixer is running.
8. Once all water is in, turn mixer up to medium-high and run until icing is fluffy with stiff peaks. This may take 7 to 10 minutes.
9. Using a piping bag pipe, create designs on cooled sugar cookies. Let set a few hours.