Sugar Cookie Icing (5 Minute Recipe!)

This super simple sugar cookie icing is the perfect addition to your favorite sugar cookies, cut out cookies, and more! Plus, it dries quickly so no more waiting – enjoy your cookies right away!

A few weeks ago I posted one of my favorite cut out sugar cookie recipes. I’ll be sharing another cream cheese sugar cookie soon but the main thing both have in common – they are better topped with sugar cookie icing!

Sure, you could get some store-bought frosting to add to your cookies. But homemade icing is way better! Plus, you can pipe it on in all sorts of designs and fun colors!

This icing is perfect for either piping, spreading, or just drizzling on top of your favorite cookies! I used it with my boys a couple of weeks ago and all three of them (even my husband) thought it tasted fantastic.

I call that a win!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• Super simple – this only takes a few ingredients and all you do is mix it together. No stand mixer, no beaters, nothing. Just mix with a spoon and you’re good to go!
• Versatile – I’ve included instructions in the recipe card at the bottom of this post to tell you how to slightly change the recipe for piping, spreading, and drizzling. It tastes great no matter what, you’ll just want to adjust the thickness of the icing.
• Colorable – add a drop of food coloring or two to make this icing perfect for whatever type of cookies you’re decorating!

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes

• Corn syrup – the corn syrup will give the frosting a nice glossy look BUT it’s not necessary at all. If you’d prefer to skip the corn syrup, skip away.
• Heavy cream – if you don’t have heavy cream, whole milk works as well. You don’t want something with less fat than that as the icing won’t stay together like it’s supposed to.
• Food coloring (optional) – if you do want to add food coloring, I recommend gel food coloring so it doesn’t change the liquid nature of the icing.

You’ll also need either a piping bag or a small plastic bag with the tip cut off.

Instructions

This icing is super easy to make, whether you want to make a version that’s great for piping, spreading, or drizzling over your cookies! The steps are the same, with just slight variations in how much to use of each ingredient!

Start by combining powdered sugar, heavy whipping cream, light corn syrup, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons water together and mixing well. If you’re not using corn syrup, do the same just without the corn syrup.

I like to use a whisk for this step just to get out any chunks of powdered sugar, but you can also just use a spoon and stir well.

If needed add another 1 or 2 tablespoons of water until you get your desired consistency. This is where you’ll adjust based on what you want to use the icing for.

• Piping – don’t add additional water and you’ll end up with a thicker icing.
• Drizzling – add 1-2 tablespoons of water to get a thinner icing
• Spreading – don’t add any additional water to keep the icing as thick as possible. If you want it even thicker, you can skip 1 tablespoon of the water in the base recipe.

If you want to color your icing, use a toothpick to transfer food coloring to icing then stir together. I used about 1 drop of red food coloring to make a soft pink for these cream cheese sugar cookies.  

If piping or drizzling, put icing into zippered bags and cut the tip off. If drizzling, go with a very small cut. If piping, you can cut it slightly bigger but still fairly small.

If spreading the icing on the cookies like frosting, skip the bag step and just put the frosting in a bowl and spread with a knife.

Decorate your cookies with icing and anything else you might like – sprinkles, toppings, etc. This would also be really good on sugar cookie bites or these orange sugar cookies!

I recommend adding additional decorations immediately after icing rather than icing all the cookies then decorating because this icing does dry quickly and the decorations will no longer stick after it dries.

Let the icing dry for a few minutes before enjoying cookies!

Expert Tips

Give it a slight almond flavor by swapping out the vanilla extract and replacing it with almond extract. It will add a slightly different scent to the icing, but it’s yummy regardless.

Replace heavy cream with whole milk if you don’t have heavy cream. Just make sure it’s whole milk and not something with less fat content.

Use a toothpick to transfer your food coloring to the icing then stir in with the toothpick. This will help you control the exact amount of color being added.

Place your plastic bag in a cup with the opening of the bag tucked around the top of the cup to the transfer the icing into a bag. Way less mess this way!

Cut a very small tip off your plastic bag at first then get bigger if you need to. You can always cut more, but you can’t cut less.

Refrigerate any leftover icing for up to three days. Simply stir it together to use again after removing from the fridge. If it’s too thick to use out of the fridge, add a tsp of water then try again.

Decorate individual cookies quickly after icing. This icing dries quickly and sprinkles, etc. won’t stick to it if you ice an entire batch of cookies first.

Recipe FAQs

Easy Cookie Recipes

If you like cookies, you’ll love these delicious treats!

• Soft and fluffy snickerdoodles – our go-to recipe! These snickerdoodles are soft, fluffy, and super easy to make!
• Snicker cookies – cookies with mini Snickers baked inside, they’re ooey gooey and delicious.
• Rolo cookies – another candy filled cookie that comes with a chocolate and caramel filled center!
• Cherry cheesecake cookies – what you get when cherry pie, cheesecake, and sugar cookies have a cookie baby! So yummy!
• Homemade moon pie – a delicious cookie sandwich filled with marshmallow fluff!