These bunny sugar cookies are a great way to celebrate spring or Easter, especially if you want a fun seasonal activity. Topped with a delicious homemade buttercream, these rabbit cookies would be a nice addition to an Easter basket as well as springtime brunches and parties! It's also my favorite sugar cookie recipe because it's a no-chill dough so you can immediately bake your cookies once you've rolled out and cut your bunny shapes.

A love a themed baking project, especially when it coincides with a holiday!
In autumn, give my pumpkin cookie decorating tutorial a go for the cutest (and super easy) fall cookies.
My Christmas tree sugar cookies and wreath cookies are the winter sister to these recipes! They're soft and chewy with easy steps to decorate.
And for a fun alternative base cookie to all of these, my chocolate chip sugar cookies are SO good! Chocolate chips in a sugar cookie are a very welcome surprise in my book.
Jump to:
- Ingredients and Tools You'll Need for Easter Bunny Cookies
- Why You'll Love this Sugar Cookie Recipe
- Making these Cookies
- Buttercream for the Cutest Easter Cookies
- Step-by-step Instructions for Decorating these Delicious Sugar Cookies
- Recipe FAQ
- General Tips for Chewy Sugar Cookies
- More Cookies to Try
- Easy Decorated Bunny Sugar Cookies
Ingredients and Tools You'll Need for Easter Bunny Cookies
The recipe card contains all the steps for making these cute cookies, but below are ingredient highlights, as well as some special tools:
- Piping tip and bag - You'll need these tools to make decorated cookies. I recommend a small open star tip like #14 or #16 for piping the textured fur onto these little bunnies, but any small round tip close to that size will do just fine.
- Bunny-shaped cookie cutter - A two-inch or three-inch-sized bunny cookie cutter works well.
- Pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste – Vanilla adds a sweet taste and aroma here. Know that you don’t need expensive vanilla extract for good flavor. I never taste much difference between pricier extracts and more basic ones.
- Almond extract – This extract brings a warm and nutty flavor of almond to these basic sugar cookies.
- Buttercream frosting - Instead of using a royal icing recipe, we decorate these adorable Easter bunny sugar cookies with buttercream. Piping that on top of these cookies adds texture.
- Food gel coloring - If you want to dye your frosting, you'll need food coloring. Wilton is normally available in grocery stores. Americolor and Chef Master also make high-quality food gels.
Why You'll Love this Sugar Cookie Recipe
- Comes together quickly: This sugar cookie recipe is great because it uses a no-chill dough. That means you can decorate and eat these cookies sooner rather than later.
- Soft, chewy cookies: The ratio of butter to flour and sugars here leaves you with deliciously melt-in-your mouth cookies. Plus, decorating these cookies with a buttercream instead of royal icing, which can be a harder coating, makes them tender.
- Easy-to-make buttercream: The American buttercream here is simple but full of flavor. It also isn't overly sweet (thanks to adding a bit of lemon juice to offset sugar overload). Plus, when stored at room temperature, it crusts. With some wax paper, you can stack these adorable Easter treats atop each other without smudging the designs.
- Lots of ways to decorate: I use white, pink, and green buttercream, but you can certainly make these your own. Have fun choosing different pastel shades of frosting or taking these in a different direction with color. Prefer not to use food coloring? You can also keep these cookies white and simple.
Making these Cookies
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Cream unsalted butter, vanilla and almond extract, and sugars together in your mixing bowl for 3 minutes.
Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure ingredients are all mixing together. Then add salt, baking powder, as well as your eggs and flour. Mix for about 2 minutes on medium speed. Dough will initially look crumbly but pull together.
Next, I spread a silicone mat or two onto my kitchen counter, flour them, and use these for rolling out my dough with my rolling pin. I divide dough into halves or thirds, working with it in two or three waves. I find it easier to roll dough in smaller portions at a time.
Once the sugar cookie dough is flattened and roughly a quarter of an inch thick, press the cookie cutter into it to form your bunny shape. Peel away the excess, adding it back to your bowl of dough.
Use a spatula to lift and transfer dough onto an ungreased aluminum cookie sheet, with about 2 inches between each of them. Or you can do what I do - space out the cookies on silicon mats and slide those onto each baking sheet.
If you don't have baking mats, no need to line baking pans. Placing each cookie on an ungreased cookie sheet works perfectly.
Bake cookies for 11-15 minutes (longer time for larger or thick cookies and less for small, thinner cookies).
Transfer them to a cooling rack after they’ve sat on the cookie sheets 5 or so minutes outside of the oven and are firm enough to handle.
Repeat these steps with the rest of the dough until you've made all your cookies.
Buttercream for the Cutest Easter Cookies
With an electric mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, combine unsalted butter, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, heavy cream, and salt. Beat in very short bursts to avoid confectioners' sugar flying everywhere before you increase the mixer speed to high for about 3 minutes.
If too sweet for your liking, add a splash of lemon juice and taste test.
Once happy with flavor, drag the spatula from the middle of your bowl to its edges, watching as the tears and bubbles in your buttercream disappear. Spend 3-4 minutes doing these motions to achieve the right consistency for smooth frosting.
Then, divide your buttercream. I set aside a small amount for the green leaves, knowing that I would primarily use pink and white.
Step-by-step Instructions for Decorating these Delicious Sugar Cookies
After your cookies have cooled on a wire rack, start piping your buttercream! A small open star tip like Wilton 14 or 16 works great for texture.
Start from the bunny ears and pipe a thin line of pink frosting to make the underside of their ears.
Take your bag of white frosting fitted with another small piping tip. Trace around the pink sections of the ears, outlining them with your white buttercream.
Then, it's super easy - draw lines of make lines of frosting back and forth across each cookie. That's it!
Have fun with alternating other colors if you like.
Repeat steps for every cookie, switching as desired between piping tips for different colors and texture.
If you want more texture, make little dots of frosting across their necklines to create wreaths or bows!
You can also use a leaf tip like #352 to elaborate on the design.
To make a leaf, with the narrow end of the tip pointing outward, squeeze frosting from your piping bag at a 45-degree angle onto the surface of your cookie.
As you continue to apply pressure, lift the piping bag slightly, and then release the pressure to create a tapered end on the leaf.
Recipe FAQ
Cookies can spread if the dough is too moist. It can also spread due to an excessive amount of baking soda.
If you follow the steps in this recipe, though, you won't have that issue.
Generally, adding a bit of baking powder or flour to a cookie's dough can help prevent them from spreading as much. Chilling dough before baking it is another method to prevent spreading.
These cookies will stay fresh at room temperature (around 70°F ) for 3-4 days.
These cookies also freeze well, frosted or unfrosted. If you've already frosted them, give the buttercream time to form a crust before freezing. This hardened texture will form if the room is not too hot or humid (room temperature or slightly cooler is great) and keeps the design from getting smudged.
After buttercream has formed a crust, place cookies in a single layer in an airtight container. Gently add wax or parchment paper on top of the first cookie layer so any frosting doesn't get caught on other cookies or frosting but paper instead. Continue filling container with cookies, separating each layer with paper.
Cookies will retain their flavor for about three months in the freezer. Let them come to room temperature before serving.
General Tips for Chewy Sugar Cookies
- If you aren't already, use a scale for accuracy in your baking. This ensures you're following the exact measurements and your cookies will turn out how the recipe intended them.
- Periodically check the freshness of your leavening agents. Mix a pinch of baking powder with hot water. For baking soda, combine it with a few drops of something acidic, like vinegar or lemon juice. If your leavening agents have no reaction (i.e. no fizzing or bubbling), it means they also won't help your ingredients rise during the baking process.
- Before starting a recipe, clear your workspace and set out all your ingredients in front of you. This will make it less likely that you'll forget to leave something important out of your mixing bowl!
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More Cookies to Try
Easy Decorated Bunny Sugar Cookies
Making these cute Easter bunny cookies is a fun springtime activity! Decorate these seasonal cookies with a piping bag and pastel shades of buttercream.
- Prep Time: 45 minutes
- Decorating Time: 1 hour
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours
- Yield: 35-40 cookies 1x
- Category: Dessert
Ingredients
Cookie Ingredients
- 12 T butter (170 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 cups + 2 T (380 grams) all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- ⅔ cup (150 grams) white sugar
- ½ cup (90 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp almond extract
- 1 ¼ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- 2 cold, large eggs, straight from the fridge
Buttercream Ingredients
- 6 cups (750 grams) powdered sugar
- 1 ½ sticks (170 grams) of unsalted butter, room temperature
- ½ cup (150 grams) heavy cream (see notes)*
- 4 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsp almond extract
- Pinch of salt
- Lemon juice to cut sweetness
- Food gels to dye your frosting
Instructions
Sugar Cookie Dough
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Cream butter, vanilla and almond extracts, and sugars together in your mixing bowl for 3 minutes.
- Stop the mixer and add salt, baking powder, as well as your eggs and flour. Mix for about 2 minutes on medium speed. Dough will initially look crumbly but pull together.
- Roll the dough into a ball on a clean, flat, floured surface. I like dividing half at a time and rolling it out to about ¼ inch before pressing the cookie cutters into the dough.
- Use a spatula to lift and transfer dough onto ungreased aluminum baking sheets, with about 2 inches between each of them. Bake for 11-14 minutes (longer time for larger cookies, shorter for small ones).
- Transfer them to cooling racks after they’ve sat on the baking sheets 5 or so minutes outside of the oven and are firm enough to handle.
Buttercream Frosting
- Combine unsalted butter, powdered sugar, almond and vanilla extracts, heavy cream, and salt in mixing bowl. Beat with electric mixer in very short bursts to avoid confectioners’ sugar flying everywhere before you increase the mixer speed to high for about 3 minutes.
- Taste test. Add splash of lemon juice if too sweet.
- Spend 3-4 minutes dragging the spatula from the middle of your bowl to its edges to achieve nice, smooth frosting.
- Divide buttercream. To keep it simple, I used two shades of green food coloring, along with red. After mixing each color, put them into separate piping bags, leaving some white in your mixing bowl for backup.
Cookie Assembly
- Load buttercream into piping bags, fitted with a small open round or open star tip. For my green, I used tips 14 and 21 for variety.
- With the narrow end of the tip pointing outward, squeeze frosting from your piping bag onto the surface of your cookie. As you continue to apply pressure, lift the piping bag slightly, and then release the pressure to create design. Do this at a 45-degree angle.
- Continue piping trees in a consistent pattern, repeating steps for every cookie. Feel free to switch between piping tips for different colors and texture.
- As a last step, use your red frosting in a piping bag (fitted with a small round open or star tip) to add berries or ribbons. Alternatively, you can use your favorite blend of holiday sprinkles or M&Ms for wreath decor.
Notes
Regarding the buttercream:
- When my kitchen is colder, I add more liquid to my bowl. The moisture helps colder, stiffer ingredients mix together more easily. If your kitchen is humid and/or warm, start with about ⅓ cup (80 grams) of heavy cream and add more from there.
- If you have leftover buttercream, you can freeze it for up to 3 months in an airtight container. Let it thaw and rewhip before using.
Stacy Hall
Perfect timing for Easter. Thank you. These look fantastic !
Susan
Thank you! Hope you enjoy! 🐰