SUGAR COOKIES - BAKING THE COOKIES

First I want to share with you all the cookie cutters I got. I found these at Michael's craft store for around $9. The box contains 20 Christmas cookie cutters, not bad, making them around .45 cents each. Plus they have some really cute ones, I am excited about the little present and the peppermint candy ones! They are all really cute and not just the normal ones you always see either.

Now on to the baking. I used a recipe from All Recipes and made some minor changes to it. You can find the original recipe HERE. Below is the recipe with the changes I made last night.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Here is the butter and sugar I creamed. You need to let your butter reach room temperature before starting this to make the mixing much easier.



Next add the eggs and vanilla. For the vanilla I used something a little different. My mom had a bottle of infused vanilla that she made. You basically pour vodka in the bottle with the vanilla beans and let it infuse over several months.



This is the bottle of infused vanilla I used.



This is what it should look like after adding the eggs and vanilla.



Next, you need to add the dry ingredients. I started out by doing it a cup of flour at a time.



Now you are ready to cover your dough with plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.



I have one of those silicone cooking mats that I used in place of parchment paper. I sugared the surface and rolled the dough directly on this mat. Then I used the cookies cutters and cut out my cookies and removed the scraps.





After about 7 minutes, my cookies were done. You really need to watch your first batch to see how quickly your oven will cook them. You don't want brown cookies, you want them to be white, these make for softer cookies.


I only did two pans of cookies last night, and the reason why is my silicone mat. I thought it would be great to use in place of parchment paper, but it was not. I had to wash the mat in between pans of cookies and that was going to be too time consuming. So tonight I will continue baking the rest of my cookies after getting parchment paper.

As far as the taste of the cookies, I was pleased. They were soft and sweet. I thought it was a good level of sweetness without being overly sweet, I will let the icing handle that. I thought the cookies also held up really well and didn't crumble or break when I moved them to a plastic bag after cooling.

Tonight - let the icing begin!!!!!