Christmas Cookies--Sugar Cookies

Sugar cookies are absolutely one of my favorite cookies, no matter what time of year.  Truth be told, though, I'm just as happy with a drop sugar cookie, instead of doing all of the work to roll them out and decorate them.  Maddie insisted, though, so we made cut-out cookies. :)

The recipe I use is one that I got off of a Wilton cookie cutter package years ago.

1 cup of butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

2 t. baking powder

3 cups all-purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar.  Add egg, vanilla and baking powder.  Then add flour one cup at a time.  Roll dough out to 1/8" thickness and cut out shapes. Bake at 400* for 6-8 minutes.  

That's it--super simple.

Rolling out the dough

The girls did most of this, and honestly, at the end, it was Maddie plugging along.  Something about roll-out cookies just wears me out. :)

Working together--man, I love these girls.

Being silly. :)

I see this and all I can think is, "Crap, we have to decorate all of these cookies!" LOL

But the decorating had to wait until the next day--we were just too tired. (It's exhausting watching Maddie do all of the work!)

I made a pretty easy icing: 

8 cups powdered sugar

2 t. vanilla

1/4 cup milk

Mix, then add milk by the tablespoonful until icing is desired consistency.  

(I also used a bit of corn syrup--I find that helps the icing to set up better.)

There were about 100 sugar cookies--we had to go with easy icing, rather than anything elaborate.

The girls played around a bit with the house-shaped cookies, but quickly realized it was going to take too long to try and make them all look different.

The girls had a great time--the decorating was actually the last part of the baking that we did, so it was nice to end with something fun.