These decorated Easter egg sugar cookies have soft, buttery cutout vanilla sugar cookies that hold their shape perfectly, frosted with speckled robins egg blue buttercream, and decorated with crushed Cadbury mini eggs. You don’t need royal icing or any special skills to make the prettiest, frosted Easter cookies!
You might also love these high altitude recipes for vanilla malted milk Easter cake, hot cross buns and carrot cake sheet cake with floral buttercream.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Easy to Decorate. While you can decorate these Easter egg sugar cookies with smooth royal icing, I love the taste and texture of soft sugar cookies with buttercream frosting. Just create some pretty swirls with a small icing spatula and sprinkle with crushed candy for the loveliest Easter cookies.
Soft for Days. My boys love soft frosted sugar cookies for every holiday, and whenever I make them, I’m always amazed at how long they stay soft after baking. Whether you keep them at room temperature, or save some in the freezer for later, they’ll stay soft and fresh tasting.
High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude. With no leavening in the cookie dough, these cookies will not puff up or spread. This recipe will also work at lower altitudes and sea level, too, with no adjustments needed.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients
- 1 recipe Vanilla Sugar Cookies. My recipe for no spread cutout sugar cookies makes about 2 dozen cookies, depending on how big you cut them. They’re soft and buttery, and the dough comes together quickly in the food processor.
- 1 recipe Vanilla Buttercream. My perfect American buttercream is what I use for frosting cakes and icing cookies. I often have small amounts of buttercream leftover after frosting layer cakes, which I freeze in freezer bags for other uses, such as frosting sugar cookies.
- Gel Food Coloring. I usually use Americolor gel food coloring, but I’ve also bought other brands at my local Joanne’s and Michaels. The colors I used for today’s cookies were “sky blue”, “navy blue”, “turquoise” and “violet”. But besides the two shades of blue I created, these cookies would be beautiful in a variety of pastel shades of pink, yellow, green and lavender.
- Vanilla Extract + Cocoa Powder. To spatter the frosted cookies with speckles, like a speckled egg, you’ll be making an edible “paint” with just vanilla extract and cocoa powder.
- Cadbury Mini Eggs.
Instructions
Cookies
- Make the vanilla sugar cookie dough as instructed. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes before rolling out and cutting the cookies.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out the cookie dough to 1/4 inch thick, using a little more flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking.
- Using a 2 1/2 – 3 inch oval or egg-shaped cookie cutter, cut as many cookies as you can, placing them 1 inch apart on several baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Gather up the dough scraps, roll them out again, and continue to cut as many cookies as you can.
- Chill the cut cookies on the baking sheets for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Bake one pan of cookies at a time, for about 12 minutes, until there is no appearance of raw or wet dough.
- Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for several minutes, then use a spatula to gently transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream
- Make the vanilla buttercream as instructed. You can add any flavor of extract that you like, or even add some malted milk powder for a malt flavored buttercream.
- If coloring the buttercream, divide it into several small bowls. Start with very small amounts of food coloring for soft pastel colors, and add more as needed.
- For the lighter sky blue color pictured, add a small amount each of turquoise and navy blue gel food coloring. For the soft, robins egg blue-gray color, add a small amount each of purple or violet, navy blue and sky blue. If you want a light green color, just use sky blue.
Decorating
- Use a small offset spatula to spread the buttercream onto the cooled cookies.
- In a small bowl, combine the vanilla extract and cocoa powder, stirring it with a small craft brush until you have a smooth, thin edible “paint”.
- Hold the brush over the cookies and use your finger to pull the bristles back, so that the paint spatters tiny drops against the frosted cookies to look like speckled eggs. You don’t want the brush to be too wet, or you’ll get large splotches instead of tiny speckles.
- Finish decorating the cookies with crushed Cadbury mini eggs.
Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common baking questions, so that you can be successful in your own baking!
Frequently Asked Questions
Store the frosted cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.
If you don’t have an egg shaped or oval cookie cutter, you can still easily make these egg shaped cookies. If you have a round metal cookie cutter, you can carefully squeeze two sides to turn the circle into an oval (which is what I did). Another option is to roll the dough slightly thicker than 1/4 inch and cut the dough using a round cookie cutter. Then, gently roll the rounds in one direction into an oval shape.
I have an easy royal icing recipe that will also work with the speckles spattered over the icing.
After making the dough, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to 1 week, or freeze it for up to 3-6 months. Let it come to room temperature, until still cool, but pliable enough to roll out without too much difficulty.
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Easter Egg Frosted Sugar Cookies
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Food Processor
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
Ingredients
- 1 recipe Vanilla Sugar Cookies
- 1 recipe Vanilla Buttercream
- gel food coloring ("sky blue", "navy blue", "turquoise", "violet")
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp cocoa powder
- Cadbury mini eggs
Instructions
Cookies
- Make the vanilla sugar cookie dough as instructed. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 20 minutes before rolling out and cutting the cookies.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to an even thickness between 1/8 – 1/4 inch thick., using a little more flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking.
- Using a 2 1/2 – 3 inch oval or egg-shaped cookie cutter, cut as many cookies as you can, placing them 1 inch apart on several baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Gather up the dough scraps, roll them out again, and continue to cut as many cookies as you can.
- Chill the cut cookies on the baking sheets for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Bake one pan of cookies at a time, for about 12 minutes, until there is no appearance of raw or wet dough.
- Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for several minutes, then use a spatula to gently transfer them to a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream
- Make the vanilla buttercream as instructed. You can add any flavor of extract that you like, or even add some malted milk powder for a malt flavored buttercream.
- If coloring the buttercream, divide it into several small bowls. Start with very small amounts of food coloring for soft pastel colors, and add more as needed.For the lighter sky blue color pictured, add a small amount each of turquoise and navy blue gel food coloring. For the soft, robins egg blue-gray color, add a small amount each of purple or violet, navy blue and sky blue. If you want a light green color, just use sky blue.
Decorating
- Use a small offset spatula to spread the buttercream onto the cooled cookies.
- In a small bowl, combine the vanilla extract and cocoa powder, stirring it with a small craft brush until you have a smooth, thin edible "paint".
- Hold the brush over the cookies and use your finger to pull the bristles back, so that the paint spatters tiny drops against the frosted cookies to look like speckled eggs. You don’t want the brush to be too wet, or you’ll get large splotches instead of tiny speckles.
- Finish decorating the cookies with crushed Cadbury mini eggs.
My daughter & I made these to bring to our family Easter and they were a hit. Plus, they were so much fun to make! I did have to add a little bit extra milk until the dough stuck together but they turned out perfectly for us. Thank you!