Gold and green St. Patrick’s Day sugar cookies, made with soft vanilla cutout cookies, green royal icing and sparkling gold sugar. This recipe uses an easy method for dipping the cookies in the icing, with no cookie decorating experience needed to make beautifully decorated sugar cookies for the holiday. Be sure to see the video in the recipe card to watch how I decorated these cookies!
You might also love these four leaf clover sugar cookies with buttercream, shamrock shake cupcakes, chocolate guinness cake, and Irish soda bread.
This site contains affiliate links. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means that I may make a small commission if you purchase a product using those links. This in no way affects my opinion of those products and services. All opinions expressed on this site are my own.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
No Spread Recipe. The vanilla sugar cookies hold their shape perfectly when they bake, with no spreading.
Easy to Decorate. For the decorating, you won’t need piping bags, piping tips, or any experience with royal icing. Simply dip the cookies in the icing, then add sprinkles and sparkling sugar. You’ll have so much fun decorating these holiday sugar cookies for St. Patrick’s Day.
Easy to Customize. Color the icing in different colors for more variation, or use any shape of cookie cutters you like. Some popular shapes to consider would be the marshmallow shapes that you’d find in a box of Lucky Charms! These include hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers or shamrocks, crescent moons, unicorns, rainbows, and balloons.
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.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients and Equipment
- Vanilla Cutout Cookies. This is the perfect base cutout cookie recipe for decorating with royal icing or buttercream. The cookies hold their shape beautifully, and they’re also not too sweet on their own, so the sweetness of the frosted cookies isn’t overwhelming. You can also flavor the cookies with citrus zest or any flavor of extract you like. See this post for my video on making and rolling out the cookie dough.
- Meringue Powder. The meringue powder is an essential ingredient when making royal icing, and there’s no substitute for it. This is what will harden and set the surface of the icing, while remaining soft underneath.
- Vanilla Extract. For the icing, you can just flavor it with vanilla extract, or any other flavor such as peppermint, lemon or orange.
- Gel Food Coloring. I wanted a deep, dark, intense green color for my icing, and the colors I used were “forest green”, “electric green”, and “turquoise”.
- Sugar and Sprinkles. A variety of sprinkles and sugar makes these cookies so pretty! I used both coarse and fine gold-colored sugar, green sugar, and the cutest little rainbow sprinkles.
Instructions
Cookies
- Make the vanilla cookie dough and bake the cookies as instructed, using any size/shape of cookie cutters you like. (Tip: don’t roll the dough any thinner than 1/4 inch. Thinner cookies are more difficult to dip into the icing.)
- Handle the baked cookies gently; let cool completely before decorating.
Icing
- In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and meringue powder.
- Add the extract and 3 tbsp of water. Add the food coloring. (I used 1/2 tsp “forest green” + 2 drops “electric green” + 2 drops “turquoise”.)
- Whisk the icing until smooth and drizzly, adding more water as needed, a teaspoon at a time. The icing is the right consistency when it drizzles off the spoon back into the bowl of icing and disappears within about 7 seconds (see the video in the recipe card).
Decorating
- Hold a cookie by its edge and dip the top of the cookie into the icing. Lightly shake off the excess, then turn the cookie upright, setting it back onto the baking sheet. The icing will settle and smooth out on top of the cookie within several seconds, but if you need to, you can use a toothpick to neaten or smooth out any uneven spots, or to pop any air bubbles.
- Let the icing set for about 30 seconds before adding sprinkles or sugar. If you do it too soon, the sprinkles will sink, but if you wait too long, the icing will crust over and the sugar won’t stick.
- I recommend dipping 3-4 cookies at a time, and then decorating those cookies, before dipping more cookies. Keep the bowl of icing covered while you’re decorating the iced cookies, so the surface doesn’t crust over.
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
Let the iced cookies dry at room temperature for several hours. Store in a single layer in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.
Baked, unfrosted cookies can be made in advance and frozen in an airtight container for up to 3-6 months.
The icing can be made up to three days in advance, stored in an airtight container at room temperature.
You Might Also Like
Please check out my Amazon Shop for a curated collection of some of my favorite cake pans from trusted brands, baking tools, ingredients, pretty things and fashion finds. I recommend products that I buy and use every day!
Did you love today’s recipe? Please rate the recipe and let me know in the comments what you thought! Also, be sure to follow Curly Girl Kitchen on Instagram, and tag me when you try one of my recipes so I can see all your delicious creations!
Gold and Green St. Patrick’s Day 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
- Assorted Cookie Cutters
Ingredients
Cookies
- 1 recipe Vanilla Cutout Cookies
Icing
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 4 tsp meringue powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (or other flavor of extract)
- 3-4 tbsp water
- gel food coloring ("forest green", "electric green", "turquoise")
- assorted sprinkles and sparkling sugar
Instructions
Cookies
- Make the vanilla cookie dough and bake the cookies as instructed, using any size/shape of cookie cutters you like. (Tip: don't roll the dough any thinner than 1/4 inch. Thinner cookies are more difficult to dip into the icing.)
- Handle the baked cookies gently; let cool completely before decorating.
Icing
- In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and meringue powder.
- Add the extract and 3 tbsp of water. Add the food coloring. (I used 1/2 tsp "forest green" + 2 drops "electric green" + 2 drops "turquoise".)
- Whisk the icing until smooth and drizzly, adding more water as needed, a teaspoon at a time. The icing is the right consistency when it drizzles off the spoon back into the bowl of icing and disappears within about 7 seconds (see the video in the recipe card).
Decorating
- Hold a cookie by its edge and dip the top of the cookie into the icing. Lightly shake off the excess, then turn the cookie upright, setting it back onto the baking sheet. The icing will settle and smooth out on top of the cookie within several seconds, but if you need to, you can use a toothpick to neaten or smooth out any uneven spots, or to pop any air bubbles.
- Let the icing set for about 30 seconds before adding sprinkles or sugar. If you do it too soon, the sprinkles will sink, but if you wait too long, the icing will crust over and the sugar won't stick.
- I recommend dipping 3-4 cookies at a time, and then decorating those cookies, before dipping more cookies. Keep the bowl of icing covered while you're decorating the iced cookies, so the surface doesn't crust over.
Video
Notes
https://curlygirlkitchen.com/
Great recipe! I love this sugar cookie recipe and have been using it for every holiday since Christmas. Love your easy royal icing recipe as well! Thank you so much!