Sing it with me: ♫ Here comes Amazon, here comes Amazon, right down my drivewayyy!♫ It’s finally December, bakers! The shopping is intense, the weather is going crazy, and you never have enough time for anything you need to do. Online shopping has never been such a lifesaver, am I right? Keep your eyes peeled for my Christmas 2019 must-haves list, which I should get together in the next couple days- and until then, take a look at the bottom of any post to find the “Shop With Me!” link to all my favorite baking and decorating kits. And while shopping is great, sometimes we just need to make something with our own two hands as a gift. Today’s cookie is an excellent choice- it’s adorable and perfect for all ages. Everyone loves a snowman. I’m gonna say it- so forgive me- Do you wanna build a snowman?
Of course you wanna build a snowman! A sugar snowman is about a million times better then freezing your backside off outside in the snow making a real one. After so many New England winters, I’m over snow before it ever hits the ground. If the only snowmen I make this year are on cookies, I’ll be one happy camper. These particular cookies are just a few steps and don’t require any special tools to complete. You can get them done in about 5 hours if you point a fan at your cookies while they dry to hurry along the process. Plenty of time to finish these and still remember to move that darn Elf on a Shelf to a new hiding spot.
Materials Needed for Snowman Heart Sugar Cookies
- Sugar cookies, baked and cooled. My favorite recipe is at the bottom of this post, and outlined in a dedicated post here if you would like the steps laid out for you.
- Royal Icing, in multiple colors. My recipe is at the bottom of this post, but if you’re a newbie click here for my easy beginner’s tutorial. (If you’re a bit more experienced, you don’t need to outline and then flood like in the tutorial, you can simply mix your icing to a medium consistency between the two and use it for your large shapes.)
- White: medium consistency
- Sky Blue: medium consistency
- Red: medium consistency
- White: piping consistency (a small amount)
- Black: piping consistency (a small amount)
- Orange: piping consistency (a very small amount)
- Heart cookie cutter. If you don’t have one yet, you can find the one I use here on Amazon.
- Cookie decorating toolkit. This is an inexpensive kit that you’ll use almost every time you decorate!
- Optional: counter top fan to speed drying times.
Not much to these babies, right? Let’s get decorating!
Begin by baking up all your heart cookies and allowing them to cool fully on a baking rack. When you’re ready to start decorating, pick up your blue icing and cap it with a #2 tip. We’re going to be making the sky first. The easiest way to do this is to start at the bottom of the cookie, just to the left of the bottom point, and follow the line up the left side of the heart. When you get to the middle, draw the negative space where the snowman will be. Just picture the circle of the snowman’s head and the long curve of his body. After the head circle, make the larger body circle and connect back down at the bottom point of the cookie. Put all the cookies under the fan for about 1 hour (double all times in this post if you don’t use a fan).
Next, we’re going to fill in the rest of the cookie with the medium consistency white icing. Use a #2 tip, just like you did with the blue. Use the etching needle from your cookie toolkit (or a toothpick if you don’t have the kit yet) to accentuate the point at the bottom of the heart if you need to. Once you’ve filled the cookies completely, put them back under the fan for another hour.
Now we’re going to create that cute winter scarf. Using the red icing and a #1 tip this time, make a scarf across the body by starting at the thinnest part of the snowman’s neck and moving across the cookie, curving the line slightly in the middle to give it a rounded shape. Fill it in to the thickness you’d like (I like about half an inch) and use the decorating needle again if you need to fix any corner points. Now make the trailing scarf. Leave a very small gap between the snowman’s body and then make a small square at the same height as the scarf top. Then make a second square right next to the first but starting at about halfway down the length of the first square- this will make a bit of a scarf ‘rippling in the wind’ effect once we decorate it. Another hour under the fan to harden, if you please!
Now we move on to the detail work and the piping consistency icings, all with #1 tips. The first thing we need to do is outline the blue side of the cookie. Begin at the middle of the heart and cut through the scarf and back around to where you started. (Please forgive the picture, for some reason when I took the photo of this step I hadn’t completed the line yet! Christmas brain!)
Still working with your white icing, embellish the scarves however you like. I like to make upside-down triangles of three tiny dots each. If you do the same thing, make sure to follow the line at the top of scarf on the trailing edge, lowering the triangles as the scarf dips down. Once you’ve finished there, make larger dots at random spots on the sky for snowflakes. If your snowflakes get points on the top- think a Hershey’s kiss shape- you can tap them down gently with the small silicone spatula from your toolkit about 15 seconds after you pipe them.
And then it’s time for our snowman to really pop. Grab your black icing and pipe two eyes (not too far apart, it ends up looking off!) and five smaller black dots for a mouth. Make sure to leave space between the eyes and mouth for a nose later. Pipe two black dots on the lower body shape for buttons. Use the same tap-down trick mentioned above if you get points on any of your dots.
Finally, put an orange carrot on that face and call it a day! Allow the cookies at least one final hour under a fan if you are going to bag these cookies as gifts.
How did these snowmen turn out for you? Is your heart melting with the cuteness of it all? Make sure to let me know in the comments, and you can ask me any questions that you might have there as well. I’m always here to help! Until next time, enjoy this holiday season and happy baking!
Foolproof Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350.
- In bowl, mix together 3 cups of the flour and baking power. Set aside.
- In separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the extracts and the egg and beat until combined.
- Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Dough will be crumbly.
- Press dough together with hands, and roll out on a well-floured surface. Cut shapes and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.
- Refrigerate baking sheet for at least 10 minutes.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes, remove when cookie edges are just barely golden. Allow several minutes to cool on sheet before moving cookies to a rack.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup water
- 3 Tbsp meringue powder
- 4 cups confectioner's (powdered) sugar sifted
- 1/2 tsp Karo syrup (optional)
- 1/8 tsp clear flavored extract (optional)
Instructions
- Combine water and meringue powder in a bowl and beat with mixer until frothy.
- Sift powdered sugar into the same bowl and mix to combine
- Add syrup and extract if desired
- Beat the icing for 4-5 minutes until it is glossy and holds a peak if the beater is turned upside down
Medium Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 5 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
Flooding Consistency
- Continue to add water ½ Tbsp at a time until at desired consistency (icing should disappear into itself in about 3 seconds after being dripped back into the mixing bowl).
