Citrus Snowflake Cookies

Being snowed in always inspires me to bake,.so in honor of our recent snow days I decided to make  citrus snowflake cookies. These cookies are so easy to make, and look so festive.

Their subtle citrus flavor is a wonderful spin on regular sugar cookies.

They'd be great for Christmas or winter parties.

What you Need

1 tube (16 oz) refrigerated sugar cookie dough.

                                                                 1/4 cup orange juice

1 tbsp orange zest

1 3/4 cups flour

Royal Icing

Royal Icing is a pure white icing that dries to a smooth, hard, matte finish.

It is perfect for decorating sugar cookies.

1 box (16 oz) confectioners sugar

3 tablespoons powdered egg whites

6 tablespoons orange juice or water

1. Let your refrigerated cookie dough set out in room temp. for a bit, to soften

2. Heat oven to 350. Beat cookie dough, orange juice and zest. Stir in flour (dough will be soft)

3. Generously sprinkle flour onto countertop and rolling pin. Divide the dough in half and roll out one half to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out snowflake shapes if you have a snowflake cookie cutter or cut out circles (I used a plastic butter lid to cut out circles.)

4. Transfer to ungreased cookie sheet.

Now....you can bake them at this time and make your snowflake designs after they cool (skip to the bottom for the rest of the directions),

Or you can use the 

ORNAMENT PRESS METHOD

 I have no drawing or artistic ability whatsoever and I wanted a beautiful snowflake design so I came up with this method last year when I made these. If you have a plastic snowflake ornament left over from Christmas (we have a ton) then you can use it to press a snowflake design into your cookie. That way you can just trace the design with your icing!

Take your snowflake ornament and if it has glitter, scrub as much glitter off as you can. Then, cover both sides of your ornament with flour (the flour keeps it from sticking AND keeps any extra glitter from transferring) and press it into your cookies while they are on the cookie sheet.

make sure you press the ends well

See, it leaves a pretty clear indention to use as a guide for icing!

OR

of course you can just bake them and skip the ornament step alltogether since they taste great without pretty icing snowflakes too! 

5. Bake them at 350 for 14 minutes. Cool on racks.

6. Prepare royal icing.

Beat Sugar, powdered egg whites and juice or water for 5 minutes. Add water if if you want to thin the icing. Add confectioners sugar if you want to thicken it.

7. When your cookies are cooled, pipe your icing into snowflake patterns OR if you used my ornament method, you can just follow the lines! If you don't have a pippette, you can use a plastic baggie with a tiny hole snipped at one end (thats what I did). Just make sure your icing is thinned a bit.

Not only are they pretty but they are super delicious!

These are perfect Christmas cookies but can be enjoyed as Snow Day Cookies

as we are doing while we are snowed in this weekend.

Happy Snow Day!

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