Sugar Cookies

Happy Holidays!! I won't be around for the next few weeks. We're MOVING! And visiting family and celebrating and all things nice and Christmas-ee. Yesterday I had the urge to bake cookies in the middle of all the packed up boxes taking over the place. I had to rummage through a few of those boxes to find what I needed but it was totally worth it. My daughter walked in from school to see the first batch of cookies cooled and ready to decorate and she was just so excited! About the same time my other daughter woke up from her nap so they were both in heaven with these.

This recipe makes around 50 cookies or so. I burned an entire batch of some cute bells, though :(Quick tip here: If you check the cookies after the timer goes off and you decide to let them brown a tad more, don't forget that you decided to do that :). The flavor of them are really good, too. A lot of sugar cookies end up just tasting like bland dough. But this has a nice buttery sugary cookie-ee flavor. I really wanted to make some cookies and use sour cream, but I didn't have any, so you'll have to deal with this instead, even though I didn't really miss it in there!

Sorry about the frosting. I don't know the recipe. I threw it together until it tasted and felt right. I used a blend of almond and vanilla, though. It was gooooOOOOoood. And it had a GREAT texture. Creamy and smooth, but still glossy and firmed up just enough so that it wouldn't get all over the place when you stack the cookies. Perfect if you ask me.

What you will need:

• 3 sticks of unsalted butter
• 2 C sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 4 C flour + 1 C flour for rolling out (any time I make sugar cookies, I cut the original flour call by 1 C because I don't want them to end up dry or tough after adding in more flour to roll them out. I want to be able to use as much as I need without worrying. So this is how much I ended up using for both mixing and flouring later)

Directions:

• Cream butter and sugar together
• Add in vanilla and eggs
• Add in baking soda and salt
• Add in flour one cup at a time
• Mold dough into a ball and flatten it down into a thick disc shape
• Lay it on some greased plastic wrap and wrap it up
• Chill in the fridge for an hour or more
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Flour your dough surface
• Roll out your dough to about 1/2" thick (I found that the 1/4" thick cookies ended up a little more crispy than I liked and the 1/2" ones stayed softer, so if you like them a little crunchier, make them thinner)
• Cut them into shapes and lay them on a baking sheet (I put down some parchment paper, but you don't have to)
• Bake for 6 minutes and check them. If they are just baarely starting to brown on the edges, take them out.