These delicious Buttercream Cookies are soft, buttery sugar cookies topped with a fluffy American buttercream frosting.
These rosette sugar cookies are the perfect Mother's Day cookies to make, along with these other easy Mother's Day Baking Recipes.
Why This Buttercream Sugar Cookie Recipe Works
- Recipe name: Buttercream Cookies
- Ready in: 1hr 35 minutes (plus an hour chilling time)
- Serves: 30 cookies
- Main ingredients: Butter, flour, sugar, eggs, icing sugar, and food coloring.
- Perfect for: The frosting has been swirled to look like mini roses, making these frosted sugar cookies the perfect treat for Mother's Day, birthdays, or even a baby shower!
- Why I love it: This sugar cookie recipe is easy to make and holds its shape while baking, which makes it perfect for decorating.
- Calories: 160kcal
SUMMARIZE & SAVE THIS CONTENT ON
If you love Easy Cookie and Biscuit Recipes, then have a look at the recipe for Dulce de Leche Cookies, this recipe for Coffee Biscuits, or this recipe for Lemon Biscuits.
Jump to:
Key Ingredients
- Castor sugar - Use superfine sugar for this recipe
- Cake flour - Use cake flour or all-purpose flour to make these frosted sugar cookies.
- Extra-large eggs - out of their shell, the eggs I use weigh 56 grams. If you aren't sure if you have the same eggs, weigh the eggs you do have and adjust accordingly.
- Food coloring - you will need two colors to make these mini rose cookies. I used pink and green. Feel free to swap out the colors to your preference. I used gel food coloring to color this classic buttercream recipe.
See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
Variations
You can use the vanilla buttercream frosting suggested in this blog post or try out some of my other Simple Buttercream Frosting Recipes! I love this Coffee Buttercream or this Raspberry Frosting swirled onto these cookies.
How to Make Buttercream Cookies
- Step 1: Add the butter and sugar to a food processor. Pulse until the mixture is light and fluffy.
- Step 2: First, add the whole egg to the creamed mixture with the food processor running, and pulse until combined. Then add the egg yolk and vanilla and pulse until well combined.
- Step 3: Sift together the flour and salt, and add this flour mixture to the egg and butter mixture all at once. Pulse until a dough forms; do not overmix.
- Step 4: Remove the dough from the bowl, cover it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate it for 40 minutes to an hour. Preheat the oven to 160°C (320°F) and line two large baking trays with parchment paper.
- Step 5: Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and roll it out on a floured work surface to a thickness of ½ cm ( ¼ inch) using a rolling pin.
- Step 6: Cut 30 circles from the dough using a round 10cm (4-inch) diameter cookie cutter, then place the cut cookies on an oven tray lined with parchment paper. Bake in a preheated oven for 12 minutes or until the cookies are a light golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool on a wire rack.
How to Make Buttercream Frosting for Buttercream Cookies
- Step 1: In a bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, add the butter and icing sugar. Beat at medium speed until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
- Step 2: In a jug, combine the milk and vanilla, then, with the mixer running at low speed, slowly add the milk mixture. Continue until it has all been added. Then increase the mixer speed to medium-high. Beat until light and fluffy, often scraping down the sides of the bowl.
- Step 3: Separate the frosting into two bowls, having about three-quarters in one bowl and the remaining frosting in another. Use the pink food coloring to dye the larger quantity of frosting and the green to color the remaining frosting.
- Step 4: Prepare two disposable piping bags with the appropriate nozzles: one with a rosette or star tip nozzle, and the other with a nozzle for piping the leaves. Fill the pink frosting into the rosette nozzle bag and the green frosting into the other.
- Step 5: Place a cooled cookie on a work surface and pipe a rose onto it. Do this by starting in the center of the cookie and swirling outward.
- Step 6: Where the pink swirl has ended, pipe a leaf there. Your rose cookies are now ready to enjoy!
Storage
After baking and decorating these frosted buttercream cookies, store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for about 4 days. Unfilled cookies can be kept in an airtight container for up to one week; crisp them up in the oven before decorating.
Expert Tips
- Cookies burn very easily, so make sure you have tested the true temperature of your oven. If you don't trust your oven, try baking a few cookies first to see if they burn - then adjust the temperature as needed.
- Make sure you are using room temperature butter for this recipe.
- Make sure the butter and sugar have been creamed enough before adding the eggs.
- If you are struggling to roll out the dough, cover it and return it to the fridge to firm up. Chilled dough is much easier to roll!
- Make sure you have rolled the dough evenly before cutting out the cookies; cookies of different thicknesses will bake differently.
- Frost the cookies only once they are cooled.
Buttercream Cookies FAQs
This happens if the oven is too hot. Make sure you have tested your oven's actual temperature with an oven thermometer. Also, bake the trays of cookies separately.
Frosting hardens as it sits, so make the frosting only when you are ready to decorate the cooled cookies. If it has hardened, just whip it until it is fluffy and ready for frosting.
If you don't have the piping nozzles suggested above, use an offset spatula to swirl the buttercream frosting onto each cookie's surface and decorate with sprinkles!
For freezing, the cookie dough can be frozen before baking. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and store it in the freezer for up to 3 months. To bake them at a later date, thaw the dough in the fridge overnight before using.
Yes! You can bake the cookies in advance and store them in an airtight container, then decorate them with buttercream the day you plan to serve them.
More Easy Mother's Day Baking Ideas
There is nothing like baking something special and giving it to the people you love. Trust me, they'll appreciate it so much more than something store-bought! If you are looking to serve these rose cookies as part of an afternoon tea, don't skip this Apple Tea Cake or this Blackberry and Lemon Bundt Cake.
Happy Baking, With Love, Kitty
Please leave a star rating and comment below if you tried this recipe! And if you're wondering what to try next, have a look at this easy Marble Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache!
📖 Recipe
Buttercream Cookies
Equipment
- 1x large cookie tray
- 2x disposable piping bags
- 1x round cookie cutter 7cm diameter
Ingredients
Vanilla Cookies
- 200 g unsalted butter
- 100 g superfine sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 350 g cake flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
Vanilla Buttercream
- 250 g powdered sugar sifted
- 80 g unsalted butter room temperature
- 25 ml milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Vanilla Cookies
- Add the butter and sugar to a food processor. Pulse at medium-high speed until light and fluffy.
- First, add the whole egg to the creamed mixture with the food processor running, and beat until combined. Then add the egg yolk and vanilla and beat until well combined.
- Sift together the flour and salt and add this flour mixture to the egg and butter mixture all at once. Pulse until a dough forms, do not overmix.
- Remove the dough from the bowl, cover it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 40 minutes to an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 160°C (320°F) and line two large baking trays with parchment paper.
- Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and roll it out on a floured work surface to a thickness of ½ cm ( ¼ inch) using a rolling pin.
- Cut 30 circles out of the dough using a round 10cm (4 inch) diameter cookie cutter and place the cookies onto an oven tray lined with parchment paper. Bake in a preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the cookies are a light golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool on a cooling rack.
Vanilla Buttercream
- In a bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, add the butter and icing sugar. Beat at medium speed until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
- In a jug combine the milk and vanilla, with the mixer's motor running at low speed slowly add the milk mixture. Continue until it has all been added. Then increase the speed of the mixer to medium-high. Beat until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl often.
- Separate the frosting into two bowls, having about three-quarters in one bowl and the remaining frosting in another. Use the pink food coloring to dye the larger quantity of frosting and the green to color the remaining frosting.
- Prepare two disposable piping bags with the appropriate nozzles, one bag needs to have a rosette nozzle, and the second to have a nozzle for piping the leaves. Fill the pink frosting into the rosette nozzle bag and the green frosting into the other.
- Place a cooled cookie onto a work surface and pipe a rose onto it. Do this by starting in the center of the cookie and swirling outward. Where the pink swirl has ended, pipe a leaf there. Your rose cookies are now ready to enjoy!
Notes
- If you are struggling to roll out the cookie dough, then wrap it up again and place it back into the fridge to firm up.
- If the frosting is too stiff to pipe add an additional 1tbsp of milk and beat again.
Julia says
These cookies are so pretty!! I love making them
Annelie says
Truffles looks delicious.
Sure to try
Thnx for sharing
withlovekitty2020 says
Hi Annelie! I hope you give them a try, they are so easy to make and so delicious!