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The Best Sugar Cookie Icing Recipe for Decorating

By:Cassie Johnston Posted: Updated:
Closeup view of a cut out sugar cookie shaped like a christmas tree topped with green icing and sprinkles.

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featured review

Five yellow stars in a row

“This is absolutely the best sugar cookie icing recipe! I have used this recipe over and over to decorate cookies with fabulous results every time. Delicious and easy!”

– CAROLE –

This is the perfect icing recipe for decorating cut out sugar cookies. It’s creamy, sweet, and packed full of flavor, plus it ends up drying solid enough to pack the cookies in a tin but still soft enough to bite into. And it shines so bright and glossy in the light. It makes for some obnoxiously pretty cookies!

The best part of all? It takes just a couple minutes to whip up using ingredients you already probably have in your pantry. Let’s make some frosting!

In this post:

Cookies shaped like evergreen trees sit next to a bowl of green frosting. One cookie has some green icing on it already.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Cassie Johnston (a light skinned brunette woman with glasses and a red streak in her hair) smiles toward the camera with a wall of photo frames behind her

This easy, peasy sugar cookie frosting recipe is going to be your go-to for every holiday!

I think the icing can make or break a good sugar cookie. Too hard and it feels like you’re going to break a tooth. Too runny and it’s a mess to eat. This recipe is right in between— it’s the magical unicorn of sugar cookie icings!

Here’s why you’ll love this recipe:

  • It comes together in minutes using ingredients you already have around. No fuss here! This icing comes together in a flash in a single bowl.
  • It’s dries hard enough to stack but still soft enough to enjoy. It’s the magical unicorn of sugar cookie icings! Soft enough to be tender when you bite into it, but solid enough to make these cookies stackable.
  • The flavor is up to you! For classic vanilla sugar cookies, stick to vanilla extract. But peppermint, coconut, and almond are all amazing options as well.
  • Super duper extra pretty. Want shiny, smooth, and absolutely perfect looking sugar cookies? This icing will give them to you every time.

featured review

Five yellow stars in a row

“The only sugar cookie frosting I will ever use from now on! Perfect taste, perfect texture. Easily stackable and tastes great. 

– DEV –

Step-by-Step how to MAKE SUGAR COOKIE ICING

1

Combine ingredients in bowl

Mix together powdered sugar (aka: confectioner’s sugar), milk, corn syrup or honey, and the extract of your choice until smooth.

2

Add in food coloring

If using food coloring, whisk it into the icing until well-distributed. I recommend using gel food coloring if available.

3

Decorate your sugar cookies

Squeeze, spread, or dip the icing onto your fully cooled sugar cookies. My favorite method is to use a squeeze bottle—perfect for kids and adults alike. If you’d like to use sprinkles, add them before the icing dries.

4

Let the icing dry

The icing will harden to soft, but stackable glaze within 2-3 hours of sitting out at room temperature.

SuGar Cookie Icing protips

  • Let the cookies cool completely before icing. If not, the icing will run everywhere. 
  • Thicker icing is easier to work with. Start with thicker icing at first, and then thin it out if needed.
  • Squeeze bottles are the easiest way to decorate with the whole family. Make a few bottles of a few different colors and go to town!
  • Go corn-syrup free! For sugar cookie icing without corn syrup, replace the corn syrup with honey. The decorated cookies will not be stackable, but the iced cookies will be delicious and corn syrup-free!

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featured review

Five yellow stars in a row

“Wish I found this recipe earlier in my life—it’s awesome! Thank you for helping make my cookies look professional without being a professional!”

– CHRISTY –

WATCH Me Make Iced Sugar cookies

Yield: Enough for 6-7 dozen cookies (depending on cookie cutter size)

Easy Sugar Cookie Icing Recipe

Decorated Christmas tree sugar cookies with green frosting and sprinkles rest on a white background.

This is the best icing recipe for decorating sugar cookies. It’s easy to make, and dries into a nice and smooth finish. Plus, there's an option without corn syrup!

(This is our favorite sugar cookie recipe!)

Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 8 minutes
Additional Time 2 hours
Total Time 2 hours 18 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups powdered sugar
  • 2-4 tablespoons milk
  • 1 tablespoon light corn syrup or honey (see notes)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla, almond, peppermint, or coconut extract
  • Food coloring

Instructions

  1. Combine powdered sugar, two tablespoons milk, corn syrup or honey, and vanilla extract, adding more milk until icing reaches desired consistency. For piping and spreading, you're looking for a thicker icing. For dipping cookies, you'll want something a little bit thinner.
  2. Pipe, spread, or dip onto baked cookies. If you'd like to use sprinkles, apply them before the icing dries.

Notes

  • Using corn syrup in the cookie icing recipe will result in an icing that dries soft, but stackable. Using honey will result in a softer icing that should not be stacked.
  • Make sure the cookies are completely cooled before frosting.
  • Looking for a sugar cookie recipe to use this icing on? This recipe is our go-to, fan-favorite recipe.

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Nutrition Information:

Yield:

72

Serving Size:

1 cookie
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 20Total Fat: 0gSaturated Fat: 0gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 4mgCarbohydrates: 4gFiber: 0gSugar: 4gProtein: 0g

At Wholefully, we believe that good nutrition is about much more than just the numbers on the nutrition facts panel. Please use the above information as only a small part of what helps you decide what foods are nourishing for you.

© Cassie Johnston
Cuisine: American / Category: Desserts

Frequently Asked Questions about FROSTING SUGAR COOKIES

Our cut out sugar cookie recipe has tons of 5-star reviews for a reason! The cookies keep their shape in the oven and have a delicious rich, buttery flavor. It’s a keeper!

There are really three kinds of sugar cookie icing you’ll see out there in the baking world. All three have their benefits:

  • Royal icing: This is the hard icing that you see people using to make intricate decorations on cookies (or gingerbread houses). While this icing makes for beautiful cookies, I honestly find the flavor to be…not great. So I tend to not use royal icing for my Christmas cookies (or cookies for any occasion, really).
  • Buttercream frosting: You’ll see this kind of fluffy, thick, buttery frosting more frequently on soft-baked Lofthouse style sugar cookies. It’s delicious on these cookies, but it does tend to be tricky to stack on a cookie tray or pack in a gift tin.
  • Powdered sugar glaze: The sugar cookie icing we’re showing here and the one I use most frequently is a simple powdered sugar glaze. The resulting iced sugar cookies dry solid enough to stack on a cookie tray, but soft enough to bite into without chipping a tooth (I’m looking at you, royal icing). It’s easy to color, easy to flavor, and easy to work with.  This sugar cookie icing will harden in 2-3 hours at room temperature (or even faster if you chill the cookies). 

The right consistency is the icing that is easy to work with for you, depending on your icing method. It might take a bit of trial and error, but once you get the exact right tablespoons of milk, you’ll always know it for future cookie batches. You can always add more milk to make it thinner or more powdered sugar to thicken it back up.

Here are some tips depending on your icing method:

  • If you are dipping the cookies: You’ll want a thinner icing that easily coats the cookies.
  • If you’re piping the icing on: Piping bags tend to warm up in your hand pretty quickly, so we recommend erring on the side of thicker icing—knowing it’ll thin out as it warms.
  • If you’re using a squeeze bottle (our favorite way to decorate cookies with kids!): Go for a frosting that is just thin enough to easily go through the nozzle without free-flowing.
  • If you are spreading the icing on the cookies: You’ll want a pretty thick icing for spreading.

I normally make my frosting thick enough that it will stay on top of the cookie, but still thin enough that it will self-settle and dry with a smooth, bump-free top. It’s really the fool-proof way to frost cookies.

For the home baker, there are a few good methods for icing your sugar cookies without getting too complicated:

  • Squeeze. If you’re decorating with kids (or, ahem, inebriated adults—it makes a fun holiday party activity), squeeze bottles are the way to go! You could also using piping bags if you’re feeling fancy.
  • Spread. I typically just spread icing on my sugar cookies using a popsicle stick or a proper icing spatula. You could most definitely pipe this frosting on if that’s your (piping) bag, but I’ll stick to my lazy girl popsicle stick method for now, thank you very much.
  • Dip. You can also dip your sugar cookies in the icing. Just make the icing thin enough to be dippable, then grab a cookie and barely dip the top in a bowl of the icing. Make sure to do this over parchment paper or wax paper—it gets messy!

On its own, this is a clean white icing. It makes a beautiful surface for all sorts of sprinkles and decorations. But if you want to add some color to the frosting itself, both liquid and gel food coloring work well in this sugar cookie icing. Gel food coloring will give your icing more vibrant and bold colors, but it does stain. If you’re decorating with kids, we recommend sticking with liquid food coloring. If you want multiple different colors of icing, divide the batch into smaller bowls to be colored.

You can make this same sugar cookie icing with honey, but it does not dry to the same soft-but-stackable texture—it stays pretty soft.

Once the frosting has hardened, I stack them between layers of parchment paper in a glass food storage, airtight container and leave them on the counter for up to a week. 

I’ve tried it before, and while the taste is fine, this particular icing recipe tends to crack and lose its luster in the freezer. Our sugar cookie icing recipe is so easy to mix up, it will take you no time to frost the cookies once they are out of the freezer!

Cassie is a holistic nutritionist, cookbook author, and all-around food lover. She grew up cooking dinner with her parents every evening, and her passion for home cooking has been strong ever since. Cassie is the author of two published cookbooks (Cooking with Greek Yogurt and Chia, Quinoa, Kale, Oh My!) and dozens of recipes published in major magazines and newspapers. Cassie has been sharing her award-winning recipes on Wholefully since 2010. She loves dark chocolate, homegrown tomatoes, motorsports, and anything that sparkles. She lives in Indiana with her family on a small homestead.

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237 Comments

  1. Lovely icing! It was really thick and looked unpromising at first, but I only added 2 tablespoons of milk, so that was the problem. They said you can do it with corn syrup or honey, but maple syrup is another great alternative!

    Reply

  2. Can you make this dough ahead of time and put it in the fridge for a 2-3 days? Can you also do the same with your frosting recipe?

    Reply

    1. Hi Alexandra! You can definitely make the dough ahead—we recommend stashing it in the fridge overnight or no more than a few days, otherwise it’s best to freeze it until you need it. But the icing isn’t great for making ahead. It’s designed to harden, so no matter how you store it, it’s going to start hardening on you. The good news is it’s super easy to mix it up when you need it because it doesn’t take long to make at all!

      Reply

  3. Hi there! I’m having a cookie-decorating party. The cookies will already be baked, so this is just the decorating part. Can I make the icing a few days before and put it in bottles? I’m curious if it will harden in the bottles.

    I’ve used store-bought icing in the past, but I’m trying to avoid that this year!

    Reply

    1. Hi Jessica! This type of icing is made to harden. That’s super great when you want to stack your cookies but less great for making the icing ahead! No matter how you store it, it will eventually harden and be unusable. But the good news is that the recipe is super quick to mix up, so whipping up a batch or two when you’re ready to decorate shouldn’t dampen the party vibes!

      Reply

  4. Your post states an option without corn syrup… but I’m still trying to find it! Or do I use the recipe you give but just leave it out?

    Reply

    1. Hi Vanessa! That info is in a Wholefully Protip box in the post, as well as the recipe card (in the ingredients list and notes). I’m copying the Protip here for you so you don’t have to go searching! “For sugar cookie icing without corn syrup, replace the corn syrup with honey. The decorated cookies will not be stackable, but the iced cookies will be delicious and corn syrup-free!”

      Reply

    1. Hi Haylie! Hopefully, you checked out the comments to get this sorted, but this type of icing is made to harden. That’s super great when you want to stack your cookies but less great for making the icing ahead! No matter how you store it, it will eventually harden and be unusable. But the good news is that it’s easy-peasy to mix up a batch when it’s time to decorate, so it’s usually not a big deal that it can’t be made ahead!

      Reply