Easter Egg Sugar Cookies

Easter Egg Cookies are colorful, fun, and the perfect cookie for all of your Easter celebrations! Learn how to bake and decorate these springtime favorites with a simple to make royal icing.

The thing that I love most about cut-out sugar cookies is that you can make them for any occasion! There are Christmas cut-out cookies, Valentine’s Day cut-out cookies, Easter cut-out cookies, and others in hundreds of different shapes and designs.

All you need to do is learn how to make one basic sugar cookie recipe and a simple royal icing recipe, and you’ll be able to make cutouts for any holiday, birthday, or celebration that might come along.

If you’re baking for Easter, be sure to check out my Cadbury Mini Egg Cookies too. These two Easter cookies together on a dessert tray will bring everyone to the table.

Why You’ll Love These Easter Egg Cookies

1. Decorating Easter Cookies is Easy: Easter Eggs can be decorated however you want to decorate them. You don’t have to fuss about any specific design or pattern, just use lots of colors and pipe on lines, dots, and squiggles. These cookies are an edible art project for kids and grownups.
2. Royal Icing Instructions: If you haven’t decorated cookies with royal icing before, I’m going to tell you exactly how easy it is. Royal icing is the perfect cookie frosting. It’s easy to apply with piping tips and it dries rock hard so that your cookies can be stored or gifted without getting messy.
3. Fun Cookie Recipe: My sugar cookie recipe 7 simple ingredients, doesn’t require any chilling, and holds its shape really well. Plus, they are crisp, buttery, and perfectly sweet.

Ingredients in Easter Egg Cookies

For the sugar cookies

• Unsalted Butter: Allow the butter to sit out at room temperature until it’s fully softened.
• Granulated Sugar: You can’t make a sugar cookie without some of this!
• Pure Vanilla Extract: The flavor of cookies and all of the best baked goods comes from good quality vanilla extract.
• Egg: Choose large sized eggs for baking, and let them sit out at room temperature before mixing them in. This helps to create smoother and better mixed cookie dough.
• All-Purpose Flour, Baking Soda, and Salt: These ingredients make up our dry mix, and are the bulk of the cookie dough. The amount of baking soda used gives the cookies a crisp texture, but won’t make them puff off and lose their shape.

For the royal icing

• Powdered Sugar: Sometimes called icing sugar or confectioners’ sugar, depending on where you live, this superfine sugar is used in all sorts of frosting and icing recipes. It blends and melts into the other ingredients easily to create super smooth royal icing.
• Meringue Powder: Meringue powder is essentially dehydrated egg whites. The benefit of using this product instead of actual egg whites is that the risk of foodborne illness from consuming raw eggs is eliminated since the eggs have been cooked and processed.
• Water: Water moistens the sugar and blends all of the ingredients together. With royal icing, adding more or less water is how we can control the consistency.
• Pure Vanilla Extract: You don’t have to add vanilla to your royal icing, but I like the extra flavor it adds.
• Food Coloring: To color royal icing, use gel food coloring rather than a liquid, so that the food coloring won’t alter the texture of the icing. I like this set from Wilton that has 12 different colors.

How to Make Easter Sugar Cookies

1. Get Ready to Bake: Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C, or 160°C fan oven. Prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat, and set it aside.
2. Cream: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the softened butter with the granulated sugar until it is smooth, light in color, and creamy.
3. Add Egg: Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix again until the egg is incorporated. Don’t overmix. Too much air in the mixture will cause the cookies to rise too much while baking.
4. Add Dry Ingredients: Add the flour, baking soda, and salt, and mix again until just combined. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula to incorporate all of the dry ingredients. The dough should pull away from the sides of the bowl. If it doesn’t, add up to ½ cup of additional flour.
5. Cut Out Cookies: 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 egg shapes using a cookie cutter, and with the help of an offset spatula, transfer the shapes to a prepared cookie sheet.
6. Bake: Bake cookies, one sheet at a time, for 8-9 minutes, rotating the pan at the 6 minute mark for even browning. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before icing.

7. Make Royal Icing: In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar with meringue powder. Whisk in vanilla extract (if using) and six tablespoons of water (add more as needed). Whisk until combined but do not overmix. See notes below for more details about how to make perfect royal icing!
8. Ice the cookies: Divide the icing between bowls and add gel food coloring to create your desired colors. Add icings to disposable piping bags. Outline and flood each cookie to create a background. Allow that layer to dry at least part way before going back and adding Easter egg decorations.
9. Set: Allow the iced cookies to set/dry for at least 2 hours at room temperature, but preferably overnight.

Royal Icing for Cookies Tips and Tricks

• Don’t Overmix: Mix your icing just enough to combine all of the ingredients. If you overmix the meringue you will add too much air to the icing, and it will dry cloudy rather than shiny.
• Create two different consistencies: Here I used an icing that is slightly thicker to make the outlines and smaller details, and then a thinner consistency icing to flood. You want some of your icing to be a 15-second (medium) royal icing, and the flood icing to be 8-10 seconds.
• To measure the consistency: Use a spoon to remove some icing from the bowl, and drizzle it back in. Count how many seconds it takes for the line of icing you made to completely disappear.
• 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 egg 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.
• Get more royal icing tips in my full post on cookie icing.

Storage Tips

• 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.

More Easter Cookies Ideas!

Certain cookie recipes just beg to be made at Easter, or for any Springtime occasion! Try these:

• Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies with Lemon Glaze
• Italian Cookies with Sprinkles
• Soft Orange Cookies
• Macarons (these are blue Baby Yoda macarons, but you can change the color for Easter!)
• Easter Bunny Cookies
• Pizzelle Cookies

FAQs

I hope you’ve found some new Easter cookie ideas here, and I know you’re going to love baking and decorating these Easter egg sugar cookies! Don’t forget to pin this for later!