If your family is anything like my family there’s an old family recipe for sugar cookies that gets dusted off for Christmas and holiday themed cookies, carefully and beautifully decorated to be handed out as gifts or plattered and served for this season’s parties. Sugar cookies and Christmas go as well together as pumpkin spice and November do. While the cookies themselves get top billing, everyone who’s ever eaten a decorated sugar cookie knows that the sugar cookie glaze can ruin the whole thing. Too thin and you’ve got a sticky mess on your hands—literally—or too thick and you’ve got a lap full of sugary crumbs once it’s dry. And forget the challenges of decorating with an inferior glaze!
If you’re looking for a sugar cookie glaze recipe that’s absolutely perfect for both decorating and eating, then look no further. We’ve got exactly what you want. This is Wably’s go-to sugar cookie glaze recipe, decidedly delicious and forgiving for the novice decorator. And the best part is that there are only 3-4 ingredients. Don’t just save the recipe, though, because we’ve got some mouthwatering flavore options at the end.
Sugar Cookie Glaze Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
- 2 tablespoons water
- Food coloring, optional
Directions:
- Combine ingredients and stir together. Add food coloring in small quantities until the desired color is achieved.
So how easy is that? Just be sure to stir the glaze after dipping each cookie, or else it will dry out and crystalize. That’s perfectly fine once the glaze is on your sugar cookies, but it’s desirable before that point.
Wait, we’re not done yet. If you really want to step up your sugar cookie glaze you can add flavoring to it. With the addition of just a little extract you can transform the flavor or your glaze. There’s just one important note, though, and that’s to remove an equal amount of water from your recipe that you add in extract. So, if you add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract then you should put in 1 teaspoon less water. This ensures a consistency that’s both delicious and workable.
My favorite sugar cookie glaze flavors:
- Vanilla extract: This is a classic flavor, and just a little bit (half a teaspoon of vanilla extract) will add a lot of depth to your sugar cookies. Of course, you could always add more for a more intense flavor—I add 1 1/2 teaspoons personally.
- Peppermint extract: A little bit goes a long way with peppermint and you don’t want to mask the flavor of the cookies. I’d stick to half a teaspoon to keep the flavor subtle.
- Almond extract: This is another classic flavor that’s perfect for almost any sugar cookie recipe
- Lavender extract: Please don’t confuse lavender extract with lavender oil. One is good for homemade lotions and beauty products, the other is good for cooking. You want the latter, so choose lavender extract. Keep it to a quarter teaspoon for your first batch, because adding too much will make your sugar cookie glaze taste like soap.
- Butter extract: Yes, you can have a sugar cookie glaze that tastes like butter, and it doesn’t even need to have butter in it. Try this, and don’t be afraid of using a whole teaspoon.
- Maple extract: If it tastes like maple we assume it’s a breakfast food, and sugar cookies for breakfast sound amazing. I’d recommend a full teaspoon.
- Cinnamon extract: Sugar and spice sure sounds nice! How amazing would these be with a nice cup of hot chocolate?
