Here is a recipe combo that I have been making for years, my favorite sugar cookie recipe with a wonderful sugar cookie glaze.  For all those years, I made these cookies but could not seem to find a nice glaze recipe – one that was easy, pretty and dried hard enough to allow the cookies to be stacked.  And then a friend brought some sugar cookies to a Christmas Cookie Exchange and I knew I had found my glaze.  My sugar cookie recipe is here and Jackie’s glaze is below – truly, a winning combination!

My Favorite Sugar Cookie Recipe

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1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 cup milk

In a large bowl, cream the butter and the sugar.  Add eggs and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients.  Add dry mixture to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk until it’s all incorporated.  Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

On a floured surface, roll the dough out (about 1/8″).  Cut into desired shapes and place on greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 350degrees F for about 10 minutes, or until edges are slightly browned.  Cool on wire racks.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies

Sugar Cookie Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

1 Tbsp. light corn syrup

2 Tbsp. water

food coloring

Put powdered sugar in a bowl and run a whisk through it to remove any lumps.  Mix in corn syrup and water.  Add desired amount of food coloring to reach the color you want.  Stir this glaze often to keep the color distributed well.  Sprinkle with decorations while glaze is still wet.  Will dry to a hard finish after a bit.

You will need more than one “batch” of this for the sugar cookie recipe above.  I make one batch of this for each color of glaze that I want.  It usually takes about 3 batches of this glaze to cover my cookies.

Notes:

I use food coloring from a cake decorating supply store.  It is much more concentrated and will produce the beautiful colors of icing that you see on magazine covers at Christmas time.

To ice the cookies, I dip the top of the cookie into the top of the glaze, pull it out and let the glaze run off a bit.  Lay on a cooling rack to allow any additional glaze to run off.