Prep and line: preheat your oven to 375°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla: cream together the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract for 1 minute on medium speed until smooth.
Beat in the eggs one at a time: add in one egg and beat for 30 seconds on medium until the batter is smooth again. Repeat with the second egg.
Mix in dries: add in flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix on low speed just until fully combined. A smooth, stiff dough should form, and be sure to scrape the bowl really well about halfway through mixing (if using a hand mixer, you may need to bring the dough together by hand at the very end).
Roll out the dough: lightly flour your work surface. Working with a ½ batch of dough at a time, roll out dough to about a ¼" thick, re-flouring your surface and rotating your dough as needed to prevent it from sticking to the counter.
Cut to desired shapes: use your favorite cookie cutters to cut cookies into your desired shapes (I love using a mix of Christmas tree cutters for the holidays!). Place cut-out cookies on prepared baking sheets with 2" between each cookie.
Bake until just starting to color: bake cookies for 9-12 minutes** for medium-sized cookies, until you just start to see a little color on the edges and the bottoms are a light golden brown. The cookies should be dry on the surface but still fairly soft when fully baked.***
Cool while you prepare the frosting: allow cookies to cool on their pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to allow them to cool fully while you prepare the frosting.
TO MAKE THE FROSTING:
Beat together all ingredients: place all frosting ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Beat on low speed using a hand or stand mixer, just until the ingredients are roughly combined, and then 1 minute on medium speed until smooth and fluffy.
TO DECORATE:
Portion and color frosting: divide and color the frosting into anywhere from 1 to 4 different colors. Fit each pastry bag with a small to medium round tip, then fill each with their own color.
Pipe on the frosting: pipe frosting into a zigzag pattern from the top of the tree to the bottom. You can either do one big zigzag left to right down the whole tree, or you can split it into tiers, and do up and down zigzags in rows. Alternatively, you can use an offset spatula or dinner knife to simply spread the frosting on your cookies by hand.
Add sprinkles immediately: right after piping, immediately sprinkle your sprinkles on top as the frosting will dry pretty quickly.
Store, allow cookies to soften, and enjoy: continue until all cookies are decorated and transfer finished cookies to a baking sheet. Wrap the pan in plastic wrap stretched snuggly over the top of the sheet so it isn't touching the cookies (we want them to be airtight). If possible, store cookies for at least 24 hours before enjoying to allow the frosting to re-soften the cookies. Then pass around these festive sprinkled treats, and enjoy!
Notes
*Shortening...can't I just use all butter? Well...yes, technically.If you really aren't a fan of shortening, you can use all butter in the frosting. However, you'll have a softer frosting that may not hold its shape as well when piped and it also may not set up quite as firmly as butter is softer than shortening at room temperature.
**Bake time variance:your bake time will vary based on your cookie size. While mini cookies (1"-2") only need 8-9 minutes, medium-sized cookies (2"-4") will take 10-12 usually, and large cookies (4" or more) may need an additional minute or two beyond that.Just go by the coloration to tell when each different size of cookie is done. If you have multiple sizes on one tray, you can always pull the little guys off the baking sheet onto a cooling rack individually and then put the bigger cookies back in the oven to finish off.
***Just barely baked: these cookies will only be soft if you make sure not to overbake them (which is easy to do with this recipe).As soon as you see any color on the top of the cookies (for these guys it was the tips of the tree points that you can see got a little golden brown), and the slightest bit of browning on the bottom, pull these cookies out as that's enough bake time for them.
It’d mean so much to me if you could please give the recipe card a ⭐ rating on the site and leave a comment to help others find this sweet recipe! Xo, Jocelyn @ Mint+Mallow