Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.

Portion out dough and pat into flat disk or rectangular shape and place between two sheets of parchment paper. Using rolling pin, roll dough out, keeping dough in between parchment paper sheets. Roll out to desired thickness.

Chill for 1 to 2 hours.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all of the dough is rolled out.

Preheat oven at 350 degrees for at least a half an hour.

After chilling, take out sheets one at a time. Remove top sheet of parchment and place on a cookie sheet.

Leaving dough on other sheet of parchment, cut out desired shapes using cookie cutters dipped in flour with the excess shaken off. Dough should be cold enough to transfer to cookie sheet without losing shape. You may have to roll away the dough surrounding the shapes.

Place into oven and bake 6-9 minutes. Place cookie sheet on cooling rack for several minutes and then remove from cookie sheet, taking sheet of parchment paper and place on cooling rack. Decorate cookies after they are completely cooled.

Take excess dough from cut-outs and re-roll between sheets of parchment paper and refrigerate again before cutting shapes out.

I usually use 3 different cookie sheets so by the time I get to use a cookie sheet again, it's completely cool.

Be patient, do not put more than one cookie sheet in the oven. If you use the top or bottom racks, your cookies will overbake.

Be sure to turn on your oven timer, my oven bakes these cookies in 6 minutes so I have to watch them carefully.

The original recipe calls for chilling the dough for 1-2 hours and then rolling them out, it also offers the hint to roll between parchment paper sheets and then chilling. I have incorporated this into the instructions because I have done it the other way. This recipe has a lot more butter than other sugar cookie recipes and the dough hardens in the refrigerator. Rolling the cold dough out is very hard and when you're finally able to roll it out, the cookie dough is warm. When I would go to transfer the cookie shapes to the cookie sheet, the cut out cookie would lose its shape or stretch. As the original recipe states, no need to add excess flour to your cookies and you don't dirty your rolling pin!

Mix meringue powder and confectioner's sugar together in stand mixer. Gradually add warm water as mixer is on.

Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).

Add more warm water while mixing if you need thinner icing, especially for flooding.

decorator bags

couplers

#2, #3, #4 tips

royal icing dyed with desired colors

damp towels

paper towels

I also use a cookie flooding tool (you'll see pictured below)

Color your icing. Depending on what you're doing, you may need to have two of the same color, a stiffer consistency for outlining the cookie and a thinner one for flooding the cookie.