Description
Delightfully marbled fall leaf cookies bursting with warm autumn colors and a soft, buttery texture. These festive sugar cookies are easy to make and perfect for seasonal celebrations, decorated beautifully with royal icing.
Ingredients
Scale
Cookie Dough
- 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
- Gel food coloring in orange, red, and yellow
Decoration
- Royal icing (for decorating)
Instructions
- Preheat Oven: Preheat your oven to 350°F (180°C), or 160°C if using a fan oven. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set aside.
- Cream Butter and Sugar: In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the softened butter and granulated sugar together for 2-3 minutes until the mixture is smooth, light in color, and creamy.
- Add Vanilla and Egg: Mix in the vanilla extract and then add the egg. Combine until just incorporated, being careful not to overmix to avoid a soufflé effect that can cause the cookies to rise undesirably.
- Incorporate Dry Ingredients: Add the all purpose flour, baking powder, and salt to the wet mixture. Mix until just combined. Scrape down the sides with a spatula to ensure no flour remains unmixed. If the dough doesn’t pull away from the bowl sides, add an additional ½ cup of flour.
- Color the Dough: Divide the dough into three equal balls. Add a few drops of gel food coloring to each ball creating yellow, red, and orange dough. Knead the colors in by hand until evenly distributed.
- Create Marbled Dough: Take about a quarter of each colored dough and break into pieces. On a lightly floured surface, press these pieces gently together and roll out with a rolling pin to between ¼ and ½ inch thickness. The result will be a softly swirled, marbled slab of dough.
- Cut the Leaves: Use a leaf-shaped cookie cutter dipped in flour to cut out the leaf shapes from the marbled dough. Use an offset spatula to carefully lift the cookies from the surface to the prepared baking sheet.
- Bake: Bake the cookies for 8-9 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through at about 6 minutes to ensure even browning. Bake one sheet at a time for best results.
- Cool: Let cookies cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
- Decorate: Once fully cooled, decorate the cookies with white royal icing as desired to enhance the fall leaf effect.
Notes
- This sugar cookie recipe is foolproof and produces soft, buttery cookies that hold their detailed shape perfectly, making them ideal for intricate designs.
- The addition of gel food coloring to the dough creates a festive and visually stunning marbled effect perfect for fall celebrations.
- Be careful not to overmix the egg to maintain the flat cookie shape rather than a puffier rise.
- For uniform baking, rotate the baking sheet midway through the baking time.
- Allow cookies to cool completely before decorating to prevent the icing from melting.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 236 kcal
- Sugar: 26 g
- Sodium: 57 mg
- Fat: 6 g
- Saturated Fat: 3 g
- Unsaturated Fat: 2 g
- Trans Fat: 1 g
- Carbohydrates: 44 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Protein: 3 g
- Cholesterol: 19 mg
