Cinnamon Browned Butter Icing (for Spiced Sugar Cookies)

The other day I ran across a recipe for spiced cookies. I thought… mmmmm those sound good. Problem was, they called for 3/4 of a cup of butter. I hate when recipes make me cut a stick of butter up like that and don’t finish it off. Silly I know, but true no less.

So I continued on my day and ran across another recipe for spiced cookies, this time it used 3 sticks of butter (1 1/2 cups). Okay, so that’s better. But truth be told, I prefer to use my butter in even numbers. I’m totally weird.

All day for 2 days I’d randomly look back at these recipes thinking, boy they sound good but the butter amounts are bugging me. Finally, I decided to make the batch that used 1-1/2 cups butter, but possibly use the seasonings in the smaller batch. They were different after all. So I pulled 3 sticks of butter out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature. Then I went back to staring at the recipes at hand. Both of them. That’s when it hit me… It’s just a sugar cookie recipe that they are doctoring up with spices… why not use the sugar cookie recipe that is my own unique one?

I really like mine because it uses 2 sticks of butter, even amount. It also uses white sugar and brown sugar. And why not add the spices and bam, I’ll be good to go…. right?

Now, the one recipe used a royal icing to decorate the cookies while the other used a browned butter icing. Hmmm… I like my royal icing recipe so I wasn’t going to try theirs. I’ve tried others similar in the past and they just don’t work. But this browned butter icing recipe intrigued me. Sadly though, it used 1 stick of butter… on a positive note, it was salted butter. That meant it didn’t leave me with an odd number of unsalted butter sticks. Okay, I was game.

They cut their cookies out with a pumpkin cookie cutter and I haven’t yet dug out my Halloween cookie cutters… weird I know! So I decided that I’d do pumpkins too. I wasn’t going to tint the icing because I liked the look of the pumpkin cookies with the browned butter Icing. They even went as far as adding vines in melted chocolate. Well… I didn’t do that, although I seriously contemplated it.

The verdict is still out on the browned butter icing… one minute I scream YES and the next I think, meh. Other’s that have tried it though really like it. The cookies, however… YUM! So if you’re interested, the Browned Butter Icing came from Half Baked Harvest. You can also try their sugar cookie recipe there if you’d like. Theirs is the one with the 3 sticks of butter. Here’s the recipe for the 1 1/2 sticks of butter….

Below though, there’s the Browned Butter Icing. You’re welcome!

Browned Butter Icing

Recipe: Half Baked Harvest

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter
• 2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• cinnamon sugar, for sprinkling

Add butter to a medium saucepan over medium heat. It should take 2-3 minutes to melt the butter and when it starts to smell nutty, you know it is ready. Remove from heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes to cool a bit.

Then add the remaining ingredients plus 2 tbsp of water to thin the icing. The icing should be thin enough to drizzle but thick enough to hold shape. If too thin, add more water a tbsp at a time. If too thin, add more powdered sugar.

Once the icing is ready, ice your cookies!

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