Brown Butter Sugar Cookies with Maple Buttercream Frosting
What’s Christmas without Christmas cookies? Specifically, sugar cookies. They’re basically the most important part of Christmas baking and everyone loves them. A couple things though… I still want my cookie to have a delicious buttery flavor - more than just tasting like sugar. Also, the frosting is so important. I don’t want plain royal icing, I want something so good and sweet that it’s sort of addicting and to me, that’s buttercream. The combination of the nutty flavor from the brown butter and the sweet, buttery flavor from the maple extract makes these cookies to die for!
Entertaining tips:
Make the cookies 2 days before and store in an airtight container. You can even make them 2 weeks before and store in the freezer.
Make the frosting and decorate the cookies the day before. Store in the refrigerator. This is buttercream so it gets soft very quickly.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
For the cookies:
8 Tbsp (1 stick) room temperature butter
4 Tbsp browned butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
For the buttercream:
8 Tbsp (1 stick) room temperature butter
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 Tbsp maple extract
2 cups powder sugar
Food coloring (optional)
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a large bowl, add room temp butter, brown butter, granulated and brown sugar, and vanilla.
With an electric mixer, whip butter for 2 minutes.
Once butter is whipped and creamy, add the eggs.
Whip on medium just until the eggs are combined then scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
Add flour, baking powder, and salt to the butter mixture.
Using the spatula, stir all ingredients until combined.
Remove dough from bowl and from into a disk.
Wrap dough in saran wrap and put in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
Once dough is chilled, unwrap dough and place on a clean, cool surface. Dust with flour and start rolling out the dough.
Roll dough out to 1/4” thick. Pick your favorite cookie cutters and cut.
Place cut cookies on the baking sheet about 1/2-1” apart.
Put cookies in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes, until the edges just start to turn golden.
Remove cookies from oven and the baking sheet to let cool.
While the cookies are cooling, make the butter cream.
In a large bowl, add butter, maple extract, cream, and powder sugar.
Using an electric mixer, mix on medium until whipped and creamy.
If using food coloring, add 3-4 drops at a time until you achieve the color you want.
Decorate cookies to your preference.
Store decorated cookies in a single layer in a tubberware in the refrigerator.
Remove from fridge 20 minutes before serving.
Serve and enjoy!
