These pretty snowflake sugar cookies are made with the most perfect sugar cookie recipe. The cookies are painted on with edible gold, making them absolutely gorgeous cookie gifts for Christmas!
Snowflake Sugar Cookies for Christmas
I baked and decorated these snowflakes cookies for Christmas. And I choose to decorate them with fondant and embossing mat, so there is no piping work required!
I used the same cutter used to cut out the cookies to cut out the blue and white fondant background for the cookies. For the snowflakes design, I used an embossing mat and painted on the gold pattern with edible gold dust. If you don't have an embossing mat, you can always paint the cookies free hand.
You will see in the tutorial below how my cutouts fitted perfectly onto my sugar cookies. That is all thanks to my sugar cookie recipe that produces baked cookies in the exact same shape and size I put them into the oven. So if you are looking for a perfect cutout sugar cookie, my homemade sugar cookie recipe is all you need!
All in all, I really love the way the cookies turned out. The gold snowflakes pattern on blue and white background of the cookies make the cookies look so gorgeous, these will make great cookie box gifts for Christmas.
How to Make Snowflake Sugar Cookies
These were the main ingredients I used to make the snowflake sugar cookies:
- Sugar cookies - I baked the cookies using my homemade sugar cookies recipe. For the amount stated on the recipe page, I was able to make 72 snowflake cookies, with each cookie measuring 6 cm in length (the longest points on the cookie).
- Snowflake cookie cutter & embossing mat - I used the snowflake cookie cutter texture set by Autumn Carpenter. This set comes with a number of snowflake cookie cutters in various sizes along with a matching embossing mat.
- Fondant & Americolor food color in Silver Spruce - I used Satin Ice in white and tinted some of it with Americolor Silver Spruce (for the blue snowflakes) while the rest, I left it white (for the white snowflakes).
- Edible gold dust + lemon extract - I mixed these two to form a thick gold paint which I then painted on the cookies.
- Fine tipped cake decorating brush - A fine-tipped brush will help you achieve fine painting on the cookies, so it is important to use a food-grade, fine-tipped brush for the painting work.
- Gold dragees - I used gold dragees in 2 sizes; a slightly larger one for the cookie center and smaller dragees all around it.
- Fondant glue - I used this to stick the fondant cutout onto the cookies as well as to stick the gold dragees on the cookies.
Snowflake sugar cookies for Christmas
And this was how I decorated the cookies:
Baking the cookies
- The cookies can be baked in advance, and that was exactly what I did. I used my homemade sugar cookies recipe and baked them one week in advance. For the recipe amount on my recipe page, I was able to make a total of 72 sugar cookies. Each snowflake cookie measured approximately 6 cm in diameter (at its longest length). Do bear in mind that the final number of cookies you get for that recipe will depend very much on the size of the cookie cutter you use.
Unbaked cookies
Baked cookies
Preparing the fondant
- To decorate the snowflake sugar cookies, I started by dividing my white fondant into 2 and tinted one part with Americolor Silver Spruce while the other part was left white.
- I decorated all the 'blue' cookies first and then went on to the white ones. Since the decorating method is the same for both colors, this tutorial shows the 'blue' snowflakes design. You just need to replicate the steps for the white snowflakes.
- Begin by rolling the tinted fondant thin. Make sure you dust it well with either icing sugar or cornstarch ( I used cornstarch) to prevent it from sticking to your work space.
Rolled fondant for the snowflake sugar cookies
Snowflakes on the cookies
- Next, dust the embossing mat generously with cornstarch or icing sugar (with the raised pattern on the mat facing down). Turn the mat over onto the rolled fondant and gently but firmly press the pattern on the mat onto it.
Embossing mat with intricate pattern
Dust the mat generously with cornstarch. The raised pattern on the mat should be facing down.
Turn the mat over onto rolled fondant (the raised embossed pattern on the mat should now be facing up).
Press the pattern gently with your fingers or using the end of a small rolling pin.
- Lift the mat up and you will see the snowflake pattern embossed beautifully on the fondant.
- Using the same cookie-cutter used to cut the cookie dough when baking the sugar cookies, cut out the rolled fondant into a snowflake shape, making sure the embossed pattern is well within the cookie cutter.
Attaching the snowflakes to the cookies
- Next, brush your baked snowflake sugar cookies very lightly with glue and carefully attach the cutout onto the cookie. Start with the pointy ends on one side of the cookie before moving slowly to the center and other parts of the snowflake. Adjust the pointed ends of the snowflake so that they are all well aligned with the cookie underneath.
- Once the fondant is attached to the cookie, use a large soft brush to brush off excess dusting flour on the fondant cutout.
Painting the sugar cookies
- After that, you can start to paint the embossed pattern on the snowflake sugar cookies. I used edible gold dust and mixed some lemon extract to it to turn it into gold paint (start with a little extract at a time so that the paint does not become too diluted).
- Use a fine-tipped brush (food grade) to paint the embossed pattern on the fondant.
Painting the snowflake sugar cookies in gold
Attaching gold dragees
- After the painting is all done, attach gold dragees to the sugar cookie. I used dragees in 2 different sizes. The dragee at the center of each cookie is slightly larger than the sides. Attach these gold balls with a light brush of fondant glue to make sure they stick securely to the fondant.
Gold dragee in the center
More gold dragees on the sugar cookie
- Repeat the process for all the snowflake sugar cookies, including the white ones. Decorating the sugar cookies in batches helps in reducing the overall decorating time as opposed to decorating one cookie at a time. By batches, I mean doing each of the steps above for all cookies, before moving from one step to another.
Gorgeously decorated snowflake sugar cookies for Christmas
And that is pretty much the tutorial for my gorgeous snowflake sugar cookies.
Happy Decorating 🙂
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