Painted Sugar Cookies

The trick to a cookie you can actually paint is the no-leavening dough. Most rolled sugar cookies puff and warp in the oven, which turns your carefully painted snowflake into an abstract blob. This dough has no baking powder or soda, so it holds its lines and the painted design stays where you put it.

The “paint” is just an egg yolk stirred with a few drops of water and tinted with food coloring. Bright, glossy colors that bake into the cookie surface rather than sitting on top like icing. Use small food-safe brushes and treat each cookie like a tiny canvas.

Chill the dough hard for at least an hour. Cold dough rolls cleanly without sticking, and the cut shapes keep their edges through baking. Roll to one-eighth inch; thicker rounds bake unevenly and the paint can crack across the surface.

Bake at 375°F (190°C) just until the edges turn the faintest gold. Overbake and the colors brown along with the cookies and lose their vibrancy.

Kitchen Tips

• Keep the painted dough cool while you work; warm dough goes soft and the wet paint can bleed across your designs
• Divide the paint into separate cups and cover each with plastic wrap; the yolk mixture dries out fast when left open
• If the paint thickens, stir in a single drop of water; too much water and the color washes out pale
• A toothpick is great for fine detail work where even a small brush is too wide

Variations

• Substitute the egg-yolk paint for plain milk tinted with food coloring for a thinner, more pastel finish
• Add citrus zest or almond extract to the dough for flavor that stands up to the painted decoration
• Use mini cookie cutters and hang the baked cookies from ribbon-and-gift tags as edible tree ornaments