Christmas means mince pies to some (yuck! not to this someone, but Sam loves them). To me, Christmas means sugar cookies. When we were little, my brother and I would spend one weekend right before Christmas with my mom making approximately 1 billion sugar cookies and then we’d give them out to people as a gift from us.
Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 cup of butter
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup of buttermilk
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
4 1/2 cups of all purpose flour (up to 5 1/2 cups if your dough is sticky)
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 400F (200 C). Grease two baking sheets.
Cream together your butter and sugar until its soft and fluffy. Add in your eggs and mix. Then mix in the salt and baking powder. Next, add half the butter milk, vanilla and almond extract. Stir well.
Then add in about 2 cups of flour. Stir until combined. Then repeat with the remaining buttermilk and sugar. (Add a little bit more flour if your dough is too sticky.)
Refrigerate your dough for about an hour. Then turn it out on the counter. Sprinkle the counter with powdered sugar, not flour. Roll out your dough and cut it into your desired shapes.
Bake for about 10 minutes. Watch your cookies carefully as you don’t want them to go too golden.
Set them aside to cool and frost as desired.
Notes:
I actually like my cookies really soft, without much of a snap. You might want to keep them in for about 12 minutes for a bit more of a crunch.
I know that these cookies aren’t decorated in the most “festive” of manners, but our local shop was all out of appropriate dyes that I could use for trees or stars. But that’s okay. Hearts it is! I also leave a fair few un-iced because they are tasty plain as well!
Do you have anything that you bake with your family as per tradition?
