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Homemade sugar cookies make perfect gifts, birthday favors, Valentines gifts and party treats! Decorating them can be fun and easy if you keep the decorating simple! These Easy Sprinkle Heart Sugar Cookies are made with an amazing sugar cookie recipe that requires no chill time and they’re decorated with simple royal icing and cute sprinkles!

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I love homemade decorated sugar cookies and I love making them at home! What I don’t love is spending 30 minutes to an hour decorating 1 cookie! That’s insane to me. I wish I had that kind of time and patience but I don’t. I also have a 17 month old that likes to cling to mommy’s leg most of the time that she’s in the kitchen so I need quick and easy when it comes to decorating cookies.

These Easy Sprinkle Heart Sugar Cookies are just that type of cookie. They’re made with my favorite sugar cookie recipe and royal icing but simply decorated so they’re beautiful but don’t take forever to decorate!

What you’ll need for the cookies: (amounts below in recipe)

cream cheese, room temperature
unsalted butter, room temperature
sugar
egg yolks
vanilla
salt
all-purpose flour

Once the dough it made, roll it out to your desired thickness (I normally go with 1/4 inch) and cut out 36 hearts.

Bake them according to the recipe below and let them cool. Once they’re cool it’s time to decorate!

Before we start decorating you’ll need to make the royal icing: (amounts in recipe below)

warm water
meringue powder (I’ve found it at Walmart, Michael and Hobby Lobby!)
cream of tartar
powdered sugar
food coloring

You will also need some fun sprinkles!

Step 1: Getting Ready to decorate!

Make sure you have cookies baked, icing made, icing colored, sprinkles ready and piping bags fitted and filled.

For the icing, you don’t want the icing to be too thick but you don’t want it to be water either. What I do is, I spoon about 2-3 cups of icing into a bowl, tint it the color I want and then add a teaspoon of water at a time, stirring until the icing is the consistency of thick glue.

I used a #3 tip for these but you would use a smaller tip if you wanted.

Step 2: Pipe an outline!

Use your icing and slowly pipe an outline, following the shape of the heart all the way around the cookie. Piping outlines may take a little practice but I find that if I lift my piping bag up and bit and let a line of icing drape down it is easier that having my piping tip right on the cookie.

Step 3: Fill in the cookie:

Use your icing to filling in the center of the cookie. You can use toothpicks to help spread icing and pop any air bubbles in icing.

Step 3: Sprinkles!

It’s time to add the sprinkles! You want to do this while the icing is still wet so the sprinkles will stick

I just added sprinkles to the top of this cookie but you could add them to the whole cookie or to a side of the cookie as I did to some of the white heart cookies in the photos up top and below.

Where did those sprinkles come from?

I found these at Target but you can find pretty sprinkles at Hobby Lobby and Walmart. These that I used for these particular cookies were Wilton brand.

I know that there are some cute ones on Amazon, Etsy has some and of course you can find super cute sprinkles from Sweets and Treats Shop! (Not sponsored, I just love them!)

Step 4: Let them dry!

After you’ve decorated these cookies, let them dry uncovered 6-8 hours or overnight.

That way you can stack them or package them up without messing them up.

Q&A:

Can I make the cookies ahead of time?

Yes! You totally can. I have made them up to a week in advance and kept them in an air tight container before and after decorating them. I have some on the counter in a ziploc bag that I made over a week ago and they still taste amazing. I know that some bakers even make their cookies farther in advance and freeze them but I haven’t done that yet.

Can I use store bough cookie dough for these?

You can try it but I wouldn’t recommend it. Most of the time store bought dough will spread way too much during baking.

There is no baking soda or baking powder in this recipe! Is that right?

Yep! That is correct. There is no baking soda or baking powder in this cookie recipe.

Do I have to use Royal Icing to decorate these cookies?

You don’t have too but if you want the icing to harden so that you can package them up or stack them then you need to use royal icing.

Does this dough not need to go in the fridge before cutting into shapes?

Nope! You can put it in there if you want to make the dough the day before you can also make the dough, roll it out and start cutting out shapes right away!

Where did you get those sprinkles?

I found these at Target. They’re the Wilton brand but I’m sure you can find them at Walmart and online too!

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