Another Christmas cookie baking party. We made three batches of sugar cookies, cut them out, frosted them – and ate all the broken ones! The kids had contests – who could decorate the craziest, who could make the best shooting star, dress gingerbread men in an outfit that looks like you, and the most frosting on one cookie.
Sugar cookies are my all-time favorite Christmas cookie. You have to have a party for all the steps in making these cookies, and that’s half the fun. The very best, tried and true, recipe comes from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book:
Soften and whip:
2 sticks (one cup) of butter
Add:
1 cup of sugar, whip
Add:
two eggs, 1 tbl. vanilla, mix well
Add and mix dry ingredients:
1 tsp salt
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Preheat oven, spray cookies sheets with Pam.
Roll out cookie dough on floured wax paper, 1/8 inch thick. Cut out and carefully transfer to baking sheets.
Bake for 5-7 minutes, and then watch them until the edges just start to brown.
Remove, cool, frost. Yummy.
I’m back! And have LOTS of your posts to read! But this was at the top, and like anything involving baking with the kids, is a favorite! I made your wonderful recipe last year — it is a FABULOUS cookie recipe and in our household now has the name Q’s Cookies. Merriest!
The kids had so much fun last night..more showed up after a play and I had to go upstairs, the LAUGHING got so loud. The cookies I found this morning were hysterical. Some were layered snow flakes with a big star stuck on with frosting and then a little star stuck on with frosting… it looked like Dr. Seuss had been here.
Oh Jeanie – that is so sweet! Thank you
Hi, Q! We made and decorated what has become “Qugrainne Cookies” (aka Q’s Cookies) last night! Delicious, fun and a wonderful tradition. You were most certainly in my thoughts!
Merry Nerry!
Qugrainne ~ and after I got done with the good artist Christensen, I spent the rest of the afternoon making these cookies!
Yes, Christmas is over. Yes, I have no kids to put to work frosting them. But I’ve been looking and looking for a decent sugar cookie recipe that will work with my mother’s old cutters, and this one does the trick!
She had a set of red plastic cookie molds that you press the dough into – Santa, tree, star, etc. They came out with the shapes embossed into the dough. Then, you get to work and spend about a week decorating. We always left that kind of cookie for Santa – and the Santa cookies had coconut beards, rosy red cheeks, raisin eyes, etc. They were gorgeous creations, but none of the sugar cookie recipes I’ve tried would work with the molds. This one does just fine.
So, come next year, I’ll be able to get started and make a pile of trees and stars and Santas – then all I need to do is find some kids to give them to. That shouldn’t be hard!
In the meantime – I have a crumb-covered keyboard!
Isn’t tradition wonderful? I have a few cookie cutters like that from my departed mother in law which will be passed on to my daughters. When I was a youngster, we put out peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies for Santa – no sugar cookies. I started that tradition with my kids, and I think they will carry it on.
My keyboard is crumb-covered too – I love cookies!