Easy Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies

These easy Easter 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 Easter baskets as well as brunches and parties throughout springtime! 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 dough and cut your bunny shapes.  

🌸 For more spring recipes like this one, try:

• Mini carrot cakes - Perfect for tea time or Easter brunch, these tiny cakes feel decadent and special but are super easy to make!
• Old fashioned carrot cake with pineapple - This layer cake is a family favorite that makes appearances at many of our birthdays throughout the year.
• Raspberry almond cupcakes - There's a jammy filling and beautifully marbled raspberry cream cheese frosting on top of each of these flavorful cupcakes.

And if you're searching for sugar cookie ideas beyond Easter weekend and springtime, I've got you covered.

• 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:

• 🩷 Why You'll Love this Sugar Cookie Recipe
• Ingredients and Tools You'll Need for Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies
• 📖 Prep and Baking Instructions
• Best Results: Baking in Grams
• 🧁 Buttercream Instructions for the Cutest Easter Cookies
• Step-by-Step Decorating Instructions
• Cookie Storage and Freezing Instructions
• Pro Tips for Chewy Sugar Cookies
• More Cookies to Try
• Easy Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies

🩷 Why You'll Love this Sugar Cookie Recipe

1. Comes together quickly with no-chill dough: 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.
2. 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.
3. Easy-to-make buttercream: The almond buttercream frosting 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.
4. 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 cute cookies white and simple.

Ingredients and Tools You'll Need for Easter Bunny Sugar Cookies

The recipe card contains all the steps and full recipe for making these fun Easter 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 cheaper varieties.
• 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 gel food coloring. The Wilton brand is normally available in grocery stores. Americolor and Chef Master also make high-quality food gels and are easy to order online. 

📖 Prep and Baking Instructions

Cream butter and sugars: Cream unsalted butter, vanilla and almond extract, and sugars together in your mixing bowl for 3 minutes.

Mix in dry ingredients and eggs: Stop the mixer and scrape down the bowl. Add salt, baking powder, eggs, and flour. Mix for 2 minutes on medium speed until the dough comes together. It will initially look crumbly - keep going!

Prepare your work surface: Flour a silicone mat or your counter for rolling out the dough. Work in smaller portions, dividing the dough into halves or thirds.

Roll cookie dough: Use a rolling pin to roll dough to ¼ inch thickness.

Cut cookies: 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.

Transfer cookies to sheet pan: Use a spatula to lift cookies onto an ungreased or silicone-lined baking sheet, spacing them 2 inches apart.

If you don't have baking mats, no need to line baking pans. Placing cookies onto ungreased cookie sheets works perfectly.

Bake cookies and cool: Bake for 11–15 minutes (shorter time for smaller cookies, longer for larger ones). Let them cool on the cookie sheet and reach room temperature before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Repeat for remaining dough: Repeat the rolling, cutting, and baking process until all the dough is used.

🧁 Buttercream Instructions for the Cutest Easter Cookies

Mix the buttercream base: In the bowl of a stand mixer or with a handheld electric mixer, combine unsalted butter, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, heavy cream, and salt. Start mixing on low to prevent a sugar cloud, then beat on high for about 3 minutes. Taste test here; add a splash of lemon juice to reduce sweetness until flavor is to your liking.

Smooth the buttercream: Use a spatula to drag from the center to the sides of the bowl, smoothing out any air bubbles or tears. Repeat for 3–4 minutes to achieve the right consistency. It should be creamy and fairly easy to spread.

Divide and color the frosting: Place the buttercream into separate bowls. I set aside a small amount for some green accents on the bunnies, knowing that I would primarily use pink and white.

Step-by-Step Decorating Instructions

Prepare to Pipe onto Unfrosted Cookies: Once cookies have cooled on a wire rack, fit a piping bag with an open star tip (like Wilton 14 or 16) for textured frosting.

Pipe the Frosting: Start from the bunny ears and pipe a thin line of pink frosting to make the underside of their ears.

Switch Up the Colors: 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!

Add the Finishing Touches: Feel free to pipe 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.

Repeat steps for every cookie: Switching as desired between piping tips for different colors and texture. 

Cookie Storage and Freezing Instructions

Room temperature - These Easter sugar cookies will stay fresh at room temperature (around 70°F) for 2-3 days. 

Freezing and Make-ahead Instructions - The 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 on your cookies, place them 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.

These adorable Easter bunny cookies will retain their flavor for about three months in the freezer. Let them come to room temperature before serving. 

Pro Tips for Chewy Sugar Cookies

1. 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. 
2. 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! 

More Cookies to Try

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