Roll out that dough and get your royal icing ready because it’s sugar cookie decorating time.
But instead of covering your cookies — and your kitchen counters — with sprinkles and colorful sanding sugars, try watercolor painting them.
“It’s really easy,” Karen Vaughan said. “It’s a very simple crowd pleaser.”
Vaughan, a former University of Wyoming soil scientist, now runs her own business — The Art of Soil — making watercolor paints with pigments sourced from Wyoming soils.
“I’m always thinking about ways to share watercolor painting,” she said, whereas her 11-year-old daughter loves to bake. “So she’s always trying to be in the kitchen, and I am always painting.”
The watercolor sugar cookie “was a way to fuse two things we both love to do,” Vaughan said.
Bake your favorite sugar cookie recipe, then frost them with royal icing — homemade or store-bought. Leave the frosted cookies overnight to ensure they’re hard before painting.
Dilute gel food coloring with clear extract — such as almond, vanilla or mint — to make the paints. A dinner plate works as a palette to mix colors.
Then, with a clean watercolor brush, turn that cookie canvas into a masterpiece.
“If you have different-sized paint brushes, you can do different effects on the cookies,” Vaughan suggests. “You could have a flat brush or a round brush or tiny detail brush, but anything works, whatever you’ve got.”
Paint a holiday scene or go abstract, Vaughan encouraged. “It’s something really fun you can do with anyone of any ability.”