Savvy Entertaining

If you only make one type of cookie for the holidays, make sure it is sugar cookies. These are so, so yummy!

Most everyone has a favorite cookie recipe and this is one of mine. I make this for Christmas every year and have been seen I was about 17.

I loved to bake when I was a kid and received my first Easy Bake oven when I was 5. That was a great Christmas. I remember whipping up something to give to my grandma who had come to stay with us for the holiday.

Experimenting with recipes was something I did, and still do, enjoy. It was this love of experimenting that led me on a quest for  the best sugar cookie when I was in my early teens. It had to be soft and moist, light and flavorful. After many, many trials and errors, I came up with this recipe that never fails to deliver soft, delicious cookies.

In fact, when I made them last night, Captain Cavedweller wandered in as I was pulling the last tray from the oven. Before I knew what had happened, he inhaled eight of  them, some before they were even frosted. For someone who rarely eats sweets, he was really going to town on them. I had to stand guard over the rest just to get them frosted!

Give them a try and let me know what you think. And hopefully you can get most of them frosted and decorated before they disappear!

Ingredients for Sugar Cookies

Cream butter and sugars.

Add in eggs, vanilla and lemon juice.

Mix together dry ingredients and add gradually to creamed mixture.

Chill dough, once mixed, for about an hour.

When you are ready to roll out the dough, make sure your surface is adequately floured. The dough can be a bit sticky.

Cut out your favorite shapes. Mine would be snowflakes!

Pop into the oven and bake until just set – about 6-8 minutes.

Let cookies rest in the pan when you remove from the oven for just a minute before moving to a wire rack to completely cool.

Frost and…

Enjoy!

Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

dash of lemon juice

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 1/2 cups flour

Frosting

Cream together butter and sugars. Add in eggs, vanilla and lemon juice. Mix dry ingredients together and gradually add into creamed mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour (or overnight).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Generously flour a flat surface and your rolling pin. Scoop out half the dough and roll until about 1/4 inch thick. You want to work fairly quickly at this point because the warmer the dough gets the stickier it becomes and you don’t want to add more flour. Cut into shapes and bake about 6-8 minutes or until cookies are just set. You do not want them to get brown at all. Cool in pan for one minutes. Remove to wire rack to cool completely. Frost and decorate then watch them disappear.

You can use a royal icing if you are of a mind to stir up a batch or, if you are a lazy slug like me, I whip out a can of Betty Crocker vanilla frosting and frost away. I also like to use decorator gels, especially the sparkly variety, along with sprinkles!