• Bake the soft cut-out sugar cookie recipe and let them cool completely. In the meantime, make the royal icing. This is a double batch of my easy royal icing recipe so that you'll have enough to flood and decorate 24 medium to large sized cookies.
• Attach the whisk attachment to your stand mixer. If using liquid egg whites, measure out 6.8 fl oz. If using fresh eggs, separate your egg whites from the yolks. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add your egg whites. Beat the egg whites at low speed until frothy, about 30 seconds.
  6 egg whites, 8 cups powdered sugar, 2 tsp vanilla extract
• Add powdered sugar one cup at a time and mix on low speed in-between additions. (Add optional vanilla extract) After all the sugar is added, set the speed to medium-high and beat until stiff peaks form (5-8 minutes). When removing the whisk attachment, the peaks should stand up without running back into the bowl.

Decorating The Firefly Mason Jar Sugar Cookies

• The cookies are mostly decorated with the blue pipe-able icing. Add half of the royal icing into a large bowl, then divide the rest of the icing into 3 bowls. Add 1-2 drops of gel food dye and mix. A little goes a long way. If the color is not dark enough, add 1 extra drop, mixing in-between. The black icing will need closer to 6-7 drops. Keep in mind that as icing drys, it get darker in color.
• Fill piping bags with the icing. You don't need a piping tip, just cut the tip very small with scissors. You can always cut the hole larger if needed.
• Outline a cookie with blue icing, then fill it in. Don't flood the lid. Use a scribe tool to pop any air bubbles.
  
• Once you have flooded all of the cookies, go back to the first cookie you iced. Use the grey icing to outline and fill in the mason jar lid. Then, use the blue icing to add a long oval for the bottom of the jar, and lines to on the sides to make it look more jar like.
  
• Once the cookies are dry to the touch, it's time to add details! Use a good safe brush to VERY GENTLY brush on the fondant powder. It's so easy to crack cookies with too much force, so go slowly.
  
• Use the grey icing to add lines onto the jar lid. Then, use the edible food marker to add the firefly "trail" lines.
  
• With the black icing, pipe two little dots. Use the scribe tool to drag the icing upwards to create two antennae.
  
• Use the yellow icing to pipe the body and the stiff consistency grey icing to pipe little wings. Add little yellow dots with the yellow icing for added details!
  
• Add on the edible luster powder with a food safe brush for some more glow and detail! The firefly mason jar sugar cookies are done - just let the dry for 8 hours or overnight before serving or packaging.