Sugar cookies are a classic recipe that you can build into interesting and fun creations. I used a hand-shaped Belgian tulip glass cookie cutter and Logsdon’s Seizoen Bretta to make my whimsical beer cookies look and taste like the ingredients used to make them. The frosting had a ton of beer in them and you could really taste the flavor of Logsdon’s exquisite beer.

Ingredients:

4 cups of sifted AP Flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 cup or 2 sticks of unsalted butter

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (or beer!)

Royal Icing:

1 lb. of powdered sugar

1 tablespoon of light corn syrup

2/3 cups of beer

Gel food coloring  (I used toothpicks)

Directions:

1. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together into a bowl.

2. Beat butter and sugar together on medium speed in an electric stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix until pale and fluffy, for 3 minutes or so. Add in the vanilla (or beer) and eggs and mix until incorporated. Add flour mixture in slowly until incorporated.

3. Put cookie dough in plastic wrap and let chill in the fridge about 1 hour or until firm. I wrapped it into three disks and only used two of them and froze the third. This yields a good amount of cookies.

4. Roll-out the dough in between two sheets of plastic wrap until about 1/4 inch thick. Using the plastic wrap will help keep the cookies from getting too dry from adding extra flour during the roll-out process.

5. Cut out the shapes and place on cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpats. Put in the freezer for 15 minutes so the cookies will keep the shape while baking.

6. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Cook for 15-18 minutes until the edges are brown. Let cookies cool before icing.

7. Whisk icing ingredients together, make sure that the icing is very thick so it will keep the piping shapes you want. Make sure to add more powdered sugar if necessary. I used two toothpick swipes of yellow and two of orange to get the beer color and no coloring for the “foam”. I disturbed the drying process to make the foam look more foamy. I let the frosting dry overnight on wire racks to ensure it was hard enough to transport.

These turned out great. They were crunchy (but not hard) and sweet but with a definitive beer flavor balancing everything out. It was fruity, funky, and fantastic. Let me know your thoughts!