Christmas Sugar Cookies are simply tradition. This Holiday Sugar Cookie recipe turns out cookies as tasty as they are pretty.
I’ve been baking and decorating cookies at Christmas time since I was a little girl. My mom would buy rolls of Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough and my brother and I would press out shapes with her antique metal cookie cutters. We’d pop em in the oven and start mixing up powdered sugar and milk for the frosting. Drop, drop, drop of Schilling food coloring and then pile on the sprinkles. Crunching the nonpareils and laughing with green and red stained teeth. Oh, the memories!
And the many years of tradition continued. I threw holiday sugar cookie baking parties with friends and roommates as I got older and continued the festive activity with my children, year after year. The kids are adults now and we still decorate together on FaceTime or when they come to visit. I’m back to throwing holiday cookie parties with friends, laughing, sharing stories and toasting each tasty-cute creation.
Holiday Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
- ¾ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- ⅛ tsp almond extract optional but it will take your cookies to a whole new level of yummy.
- 2 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp sea salt
For the Icing
- 1 cup confectioners sugar sifted to remove clumps
- 2 Tbsp milk, cream or lemon juice you can use water in a pinch
- food coloring as many drops as necessary to achieve your desired color
Instructions
- In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and sea salt. Set aside.
- Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg, vanilla and almond extract.
- Add flour, baking soda and salt mixture to the creamed butter. Mix until dough starts to roll around in mixer bowl.
- Divide dough in half and, with your hands, form into two balls. Set each piece on a sheet of plastic wrap. Flatten down into a ½ inch disc, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours or overnight. Dough will keep in the freezer for 2 weeks.
- When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 325°.
- On a piece of parchment paper, roll out 1 disc to about ⅛ inch thick. Thinner cookies will be more crisp. (Leave the other dough ball in the fridge until you are ready to press out the next cookies.) Cut out cookies with desired shapes using excess dough pieces to re-roll and cut out more cookies until dough is all used up. Place cookies on cookie sheets and put in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes rotating them about half way through to get evenly browned.Take the other ball of dough out of the fridge and press out more cookies. Repeat.
- Remove cookies from oven and cool completely on a rack.
- While cookies are cooling, make the icing. Put 1 cup powdered sugar in a bowl and slowly drizzle the milk, mixing in a bit at a time until the icing is about the consistency of peanut butter. If it's too thin add more pwdered sugar. Too thick, add more milk.Separate into small individual bowls and add food coloring of choice.
- Decorate cooled cookies your own special way. Add friends.Eat as you go.