In a large bowl or with your stand mixer cream the granulated sugar and butter until it is fluffy. If using the stand mixer it will take about 5 minutes.

Once the sugar and butter is creamed together, add in the egg and vanilla extract.

In a medium sized bowl mix the flour, baking powder, salt. Use a whisk to mix everything together thoroughly.

Slowly add the flour mixture to the sugar, butter, egg and vanilla extract mixture. Mix everything until well incorporated.

Put a handful of the freshly made dough between two sheets of parchment paper and roll until you get your desired thickness and set aside still on the parchment paper.

Repeat with the rest of the sugar cookie dough.

Put the rolled dough including the parchment paper, on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for at least 10 minutes. You can keep it in the fridge for longer if needed.

Once your dough is chilled completely it is ready to use cookie cutters to make the cookie shapes you are wanting to make.

Cut your cookie dough out with a square cookie cutter, any scraps of cookie dough you can re-roll together to form a new ball then roll it out and placed back in the refrigerator until its cooled and then you can repeat the steps with that. Keep making cookies until you are out of cookie dough.

Place cookies on a baking sheet and bake at 350° F for 10 -15 minutes. Keep an eye on them, you want them to be finished cooking but not brown. Depending on your ovens heat power will depend if they need the full 15 minutes to bake.

Let cool completely before decorating with Royal Icing.

While the cookies are cooling prepare your royal icing. You will need to divide the royal icing into four separate bowls with one bowl having less than other three. Color the bowl with the smallest amount of royal icing tan. Color one bowl red, one blue and one bowl white.

Combine the sugar and meringue powder in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until well combined.

Stir in 2 tablespoons of the water.

Next, add a clear extract to make your frosting take on different flavors if you want to.

If the mixture is still crumbly add the rest of the water.

Mix on medium-low speed for 5 minutes.

Thin down all of the icings to a 20-second icing. Transfer your icings into the pastry bags with the number three tips on them.

With your white royal icing outline a rectangle on the bottom 1/3 of the cookie. Section the rectangle with diagonal lines that you can fill in alternating red and white.

With your blue royal icing outline the outer three edges with a thin line of icing.

Using the tan icing add a half circle to the center of the top white line. Then turn half of the tan icing to six-second icing and fill in the half circles.

Using the red icing pipe a hat onto the top of the half circle. Thin the remainder of the red icing to a 6-second icing. Allow the edge of the hat to dry for five minutes then fill it in with the red icing.

Fill in the rectangles stripes with the red icing.

Thin the Blue icing to a six-second icing and flood in the remainder of the blue area. While that blue is still wet dot in the area with the white icing to create little snowflakes.

Pipe a thin line on the bottom of the hat across the edge to create the fur lining of the hat.

Pipe on top of the white areas on the small white rectangle to create a thicker white stripe for the candy cane bottom.

Add two small orals to Elfes face with the white icing to create his eyes.

Using the 20-second tan icing to create Alfie’s ears by piping an oval with a point on each side of his head.

Using a black edible marker add in the eyebrows and dot on each eye.

Allow the frosting to fully harden before storing