These Easter Bunny Cookies look just like Easter Marshmallow Peeps! They are easy to decorate with colored sanding sugar and royal icing, and will be a huge hit for the holiday!
I want a few of these Easter bunny cookies in my Easter Basket! How adorable are these Peeps rabbits? They give me that warm, familiar feeling of being a kid and digging into a basket of candy on Easter morning.
Just like marshmallow peeps, these bunnies are coated with glittering sugar sprinkles, and decorated with cute little peeps bunny faces too!
Kids and adults alike will love these Easter Cookies. Make them along with Easter Egg sugar cookies to create a variety of tasty and great-looking Easter treats.
If you like these Peeps, you should check out my Easter Peeps Cake and Easter Sugar Cookie Bars with peeps!
Why You’ll Love Easter Bunny Cookies
- An Easy Cookie Recipe: Not only is this recipe easy, but it’s also the perfect recipe for making cut-out cookies that won’t spread and lose their shape.
- Royal Icing: If you’ve never made cut-out cookies with royal icing before, you are in for a treat! This icing is so easy to make and the perfect frosting for Easter sugar cookies. It dries hard, making the cookies nearly indestructible. You can put these in bags, stack them up for storage, or mail them across the country, unharmed.
- Super Simple to Decorate: Cookies decorated with sprinkles are the easiest! You don’t need to be an icing pro. Just add frosting and dip into colored sugar.
- Fun for the Holiday: There aren’t too many cookies that are just for Easter, but these bunnies are perfect for the day.
What You Need to Make Easter Bunny Cookies
Complete list of ingredients with quantities and instructions is located in the recipe card below
- Sugar Cookie Recipe – The full recipe for my easy, buttery, vanilla cut out cookies is below. It’s made from common pantry ingredients and mixed up in just a few minutes. The recipe will make about 36 4-inch cookies.
- Royal Icing Recipe – Royal icing is made from powdered sugar, meringue powder and water. You can add vanilla extract if you like. The full recipe is in the recipe card at the end of this post.
- Cookie Cutters – I just love this bunny cutter! These cookies look just like Peeps bunnies.
- Food Coloring – Gel food coloring is ideal for tinting royal icing, as it’s not liquid and won’t alter the consistency of the icing. Use as much as you need to get the colors you want. For Peeps bunny cookies I used pink, yellow, and blue.
- Piping Bags – Disposable piping bags make clean-up easy. Order this large box so you’ll always have them on hand when you need them.
- Piping Tips and Couplers – You can use these, or you can just cut small holes in the bags with a pair of scissors.
- Colored Sanding Sugar – Match your sugar to the icing to get cookies that look just like mine! The look and texture of the sugar on these cookies is perfect.
- Chocolate – I used a small amount of melted dark chocolate in a piping bag to create the three dots for the bunnies’ facies.
How to Make Easter Bunny Cookies
- Make the Cookie Dough – Follow the recipe below to create a simple and delicious sugar cookie dough. A stand mixer makes it super easy, but you can use a hand mixer for this part as well.
- Cut out and Bake – Divide the dough into four portions so that it’s easy to work with. Roll out one portion at a time with a rolling pin to ¼ inch thickness. Cut out bunny cookie shapes using a cookie cutter, and with the help of an offset spatula, transfer the shapes to a prepared cookie sheet. Be careful with the ears, they can be delicate!
- Make the Icing: Add the icing ingredients to a stand mixer and mix just until combined. Adjust the consistency of the icing until it’s thin enough to flood. If you drizzle a line of frosting into the bowl, it should take about 8-10 seconds to disappear.
- Ice the Cookies: You can either use a piping bag to outline and flood the background of these cookies, or you can dip the top of each cookie into the icing to cover. Both methods work, but will giveyou a slightly different look. In the images, I lined and flooded using a #2 round tip.
- Dip: To get an even layer of colored sugar sprinkles, the best thing to do is gently dip each iced cookie into a plate of sprinkles while the royal icing is still wet.
- Add the face: Melt a small amount of dark chocolate and place it into a piping bag fitted with a small round tip, or just cut the end off. Pipe three dots to create the eyes and nose of each bunny. If you’d rather not deal with chocolate, use black pearl sprinkles instead.
For more information about decorating cookies with royal icing, see my Easter Egg Cookies post. There are tips and tricks there to help you!
Tips and Tricks for Easter Bunny Cookies
- Coloring Icing: Use a gel food coloring to tint royal icing into any colors that you like! More food coloring will create bright, darker colors like you see here, and less will make pastel colors. For really bright, vivid, neon Easter cookies, look for neon food coloring.
- Piping Bags: I like to use disposable piping bags for easy clean up. You can use them as-is, and cut a small hole in the end of the bag, or use couplers and #2 piping tips for accuracy.
- Sanding Sugar: You can often find the perfect colors of sanding sugar sprinkles in grocery stores or craft stores leading up to holidays. For decorating cookies to look like Peeps bunnies, you want the sprinkles to be approximately the same color as the icing. It’s ok if they are slightly different.
- Different Sized Cookies: Your cookie cutter might be bigger or smaller than mine, and that’s ok! Cookies are delicious in all shapes and sizes.
- For more cookie icing tips, make sure to read my Royal Icing post.
More Cookies to Make for Easter
- Easter Egg Cookies
- Cadbury Egg Cookies
- Soft Orange Cookies
- Banana Pudding Cookies
- Frosted Sugar Cookie Bars
- Pizzelle
FAQs
Can I make these Easter cookies look like Peeps Chicks?
I didn’t have a baby chick cookie cutter, but if I did, I would have definitely made both shapes for Easter! I know that everyone has their favorite peeps shape. You can try using a cute chick cutter like this one.
Can I use Buttercream on Easter Sugar Cookies?
I like to use royal icing to that it hardens and makes the cookies easy to stack and transport, but you can make them using buttercream instead. Take a look at my Valentine’s Cat Cookies recipe to see how to decorate cutouts with buttercream.
What are the best Peeps colors?
The blue, yellow, and pink colors I used here are the ones that come to mind when I think about marshmallow bunnies, but they come in other colors too! Feel free to use green, purple, or orange if you like.
Have fun making these fun Easter Cookies! Be sure to pin this recipe so everyone can see how easy it really is to make cut out cookies with royal icing.
Recipe
Recipe
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Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies
4-inch cookies
These delicious cut out cookies are decorated with royal icing and sanding sugar to look like Peeps! They are an adorable and tasty Easter Cookie recipe that everyone will love.
Equipment
- Piping bags optional
- #2 Piping tips and couplers optional
Ingredients
For the sugar cookies:
- 1 cup (225g) unsalted butter softened
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 large egg at room temperature
- 3 ½ cups (420g) all purpose flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
Royal Icing:
- 3 cups (360g) powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons meringue powder
- 6-7 tablespoons water
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract optional
- food coloring
- ¾ cup sanding sugar in colors to match the icing, about ¼ cup of each color
- dark chocolate optional
Instructions
To Make the Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C, or 160°C fan oven. Prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with parchment paper or silicone mat and set aside.
- In a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter with the sugar until smooth, light in color and creamy (2-3 minutes).
- Add vanilla and egg and mix again until the egg is incorporated but don’t over whip (the longer you whip the egg, it can souffle up and the cookies will rise and you don’t want that).
- Add in the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix again until just combined. Scrape the sides with a spatula so no dry flour is left. The cookie should pull away from the sides of the bowl (if it doesn’t add ½ cup of flour).
- Divide the dough into 4 portions, and roll out each using a rolling pin into ¼ inch thickness. Cut out cookies using a cookie cutter and with the help of a offset spatula transfer to the cookie sheet.
To make the Royal Icing
- In a bowl combine the powdered sugar with meringue powder and water (add the water gradually, start with 6 tablespoons and then add more as needed). Whisk until combined but do not overmix .
- Divide icing into small bowls. Add food coloring with a toothpick to get desired shades. Add water as needed to get the royal icing to the proper consistency. To ice and flood cookies an 8-10 second consistency for filling. (see Note 1)
- Add the icing to piping bags fitted with couplers and #2 round tips, or cut a small hole in the tip of the piping bag.
- Outline and flood the cookies first to create a solid background. Alternateively, dip each cookie into the royal icing to cover. Dip each cookie into colored sanding sugar while the royal icing is still wet.
- To add the faces, melt a small amount of dark chocolate and place it in a piping bag. Pipe 3 dots to create the eyes and nose of each butter. You can also use small black sugar pearls instead.
- Allow the icing to set for at least 2 hours at room temperature, and preferrably overnight before storing.
Notes
- To test the consistency of royal icing, use a spoon to lift some out of the bowl and drizzle it back in. Count the seconds that it takes for that line of icing to disappear. Add water drop by drop to thin the icing out. A little bit goes a long way.
- This cookie recipe will make approximately 36 cookies using a 4 inch (10cm) bunny shaped cookie cutter. You may get more or fewer cookies depending on the shapes that you make.
- Avoid overmixing the royal icing. If you add too much air to it, it becomes dull.
- To Store: Decorated Easter cookies with royal icing can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks. The icing keeps the cookies from drying out. Undecorated cookies will stay fresh for up to 1 week if you’d like to make the cookies one day and then decorate them later.
- To Freeze: Seal the cookies in an airtight container with a layer of parchment or wax paper between layers. Decorated and undecorated sugar cookies will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Nutrition
Serving: 1cookie | Calories: 236kcal | Carbohydrates: 44g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 6g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 19mg | Sodium: 57mg | Potassium: 31mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 26g | Vitamin A: 172IU | Calcium: 16mg | Iron: 1mg
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
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