Falling Leaves Sugar Cookies

August 29, 2020

Simple Fall Sugar Cookies for Back to School

Falling leaves sugar cookies. I love a good sugar cookie! And even better, I love a pretty but unpretentious sugar cookie.

These cookies are perfect for fall and a fun little treat to have for the start of school or just to perk up your Monday!

The design of these cookies is perfect for beginner bakers and little hands to help!

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The Best Sugar Cookie Recipe Ever

We have been using this sugar cookie recipe modified from Molly Yeh’s blog mynameisyeh.com for over a year now and love it. I have made a few sugar cookies in my almost 35 years on this earth and these ones are THE BEST!

They are super soft and have a subtle almond flavour to them. Though if you have an aversion to almond flavouring you could always swap out the almond extract for more vanilla.

The icing from this recipe is equally delicious. Which is a miracle when it comes to sugar cookie icing. Usually the cookie is soft and buttery and the icing is awful. But not so with these cookies, this icing is heaven!

Enough of my waxing on about how tasty these are. Lets get to the recipe so you can start baking these at home and enjoy them yourselves!

Falling Leaves Cookie Cutters

Here are links for the fall cookie cutters we purchased. If you are from the United States you can find them here. If you are from Canada (like us!) you can find them here.

sugar cookies in fall leaf shapes coloured in red yellow and orange

Sugar Cookie Ingredients

For this recipe you will need

3 1/2 c all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 1/3 c almond flour ( I pick ours up at Costco)

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp kosher salt

1 c salted butter, softened

2/3 c granulated sugar

2/3 c powdered sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 tsp almond extract

for the glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar
2 tb corn syrup
4-5 tb 2 % (or any kind) milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
food coloring & sprinkles of your choice.

To Make:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

Start by mixing all your dry ingredients for the cookies in a bowl and set aside. Next cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Now add in your extracts and two eggs and mix to combine.

Add your dry ingredients to your wet in the stand mixer and mix until combined.

At this point you can store your dough in the fridge for an hr up to 24 hrs OR if you are like me and you hate waiting for things to chill go ahead and start rolling out the dough until it is 1/2″ thick for nice soft cookies!

We ended up getting 30 cookies out of this recipe but that would depend on the cookie cutter size and shape you use.

Now bake your sugar cookies for 11-12 min or until lightly golden on the bottom but not golden on top.

To make the glaze

Mix all your ingredients together in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment or by hand until you get a nice thick glaze. Separate into three small bowls and add your food colouring.

For these cookies we just used your standard food colouring from the grocery store in primary colors. Add in lots of red to take in fact make the icing red and not pink. Mix yellow and red for orange.

Make sure it is runny enough to gently glide over your cookies but not too runny or it will just make a huge mess.

Wait until your cookies are cooled and then ice with the glaze. Add sprinkles for extra fun!

Check out our other favourite recipes here.