Before I started baking this year's holiday cookies, I looked back at all of my past holiday cookie recipes and was surprised to see that there was nothing centered around Santa Claus. Thus, I decided that some sort of Santa cookie was a must this year. I didn't want something too complicated, so I stuck with a circular cookie cutter and my go-to sugar cookie recipe. When I think of Santa, I see his signature hat, rosy cheeks and a red nose (because it'd be freezing riding around in a sleigh all night), a big beard, and an all-around jolly face. So today I have a how-to guide for making Santa sugar cookies.
Santa Sugar Cookies
sugar cookie recipe
sugar cookie icing recipe
red food coloring
black food coloring
Make the cookie dough as directed in the recipe in the link above. Cut out circles from the dough with round cookie cutters (4.8 cm/1 7/8 in diameter) and baked as indicated in the recipe. Let cool before decorating.
Follow the recipe for the sugar cookie icing. Take the white icing and draw on a long horizontal squiggle 1/3 of the way down from the top of the cookie for the brim of Santa's hat. Then, to the right of that, a little bit lower, make a circular squiggle as the hat's pom pom. Use more white icing to make a beard, covering about half of the cookie.
Scoop some of the icing into another bowl and add red food coloring to the portion (keep the rest of the icing covered with plastic wrap when not using it). Take the red icing and fill in the top portion of the cookie above the squiggles to complete Santa's hat. Draw an oval with the red icing in the center of the top edge of the beard for the nose.
Take a little bit of the white icing and mix it with black food coloring. Use a toothpick to dot on eyes in the unfrosted region between the beard and the hat brim. Then draw on a mouth on the beard below the nose. Finally, mix a bit of red icing with white icing to make pink icing and make a circle next to each eye for cheeks.
P.S. If you were interested...
Holiday Cookies Round 1:
Clockwise from Top Left: My Mom's Cream Cheese Fruitcake, Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti, NYT Chocolate Chip Cookies, Snowflake Sugar Cookies, French Macarons (Chocolate, Lavender, Pistachio, Lemon), Thick and Chewy Gingerbread Men
Holiday Cookies Round 2: