Some of my friends were discussing Christmas cookies on Facebook, so I decided I'd post my favorite recipe here. I'm pretty sure I've posted it before. We made sugar cookies this year, but we went with a boxed mix this time for convenience. We did make the glaze though, which is what makes these cookies really good. We use this recipe year round to make cookies for all sorts of holidays -- Christmas cut-outs, Thanksgiving turkeys, Halloween pumpkins or bats, Valentine's hearts, St. Patrick's Day shamrocks -- we've even used it to make fun animal cookies like owls and cats. The recipe comes from a cookbook from the school my girls used to go to. It's definitely a keeper as far as cookie recipes go!
SUGAR COOKIES
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1-1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar. Blend in egg and vanilla and combine until fluffy. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, soda, and cream of tartar. Add to butter mixture. Cover and chill one hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough until approximately 1/4 inch thick on light floured board. Cut out desired shapes. Place on baking sheet and bake for about 6 minutes, or until edges are just beginning to brown. Remove and cool on rack. Makes about 4 dozen 2-inch cookies.
SUGAR COOKIE ICING GLAZE
1-1/2 to 2 cups confectioner's sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons hot water
colored sugars or food coloring (optional)
Combine all ingredients together until lumps disappear. You make tint glaze with a few drops of food coloring. Dip tops of cookies into glaze and wipe off the excess. I use a small spatula and spread it on the cookies by hand. This glaze dries fairly hard so the cookies are easy to wrap or stack.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas. The night is just wrapping up for us and I think we're all pretty much stuffed from eating non-stop for the past few days. All the brittle, fudge, cookies, taffy, pie -- and that doesn't even include the regular meals and the big dinner feasts. I feel like I'm going to pop. Starting tomorrow I'm getting super serious about exercising and eating better. No waiting for New Year's for me.
MERRY CHRISTMAS from ME to YOU!
Your recipe is very similar to mine, except I also use lemon extract. It looks like they turned out great!
ReplyDeleteHope you had a wonderful Christmas!
What an ahhh.dorable picture of the girls. You should take another one now with them in the same pose :D cookies and all.
ReplyDeleteThanks, ladies!
ReplyDeleteKim -- That would be fun to do with the girls. I really want to get a picture of all 4 kids together before Nicole goes back to college. Getting a picture with everyone together is harder to do these days. I might try for all of us as well.
We didn't make the glaze for the picture on this blog, but we did make it for the cookies we made this year. It's a good one because you can tint it, add colored sugars, stick candies into it, etc.