Merry Christmas Eve! I hope everyone made it to their Christmas destinations safely. I am so excited for Christmas and can’t wait to spend some quality time with my family. Living away from home sometimes has it’s downside, so I love when I can get together with my family.
We are one day away from Christmas and you know what that means…(besides one partridge in a pear tree)- One type of cookie left to reveal! Today’s cookie is the Christmas classic, the cut-out sugar cookie! Growing up, one of our family tradition was decorating cut-outs on Christmas Eve. They weren’t as technical as the royal icing cookies I made this year, but we always had a good time decorating. Remember when I had that surviving the flood party and made the umbrellas and boat sugar cookies? Well, I have practiced several times since and I have gotten a lot better.
- 2 stick of unsalted butter
- 1 cup confectioner's sugar
- 1 egg
- 1½ tsp almond extract
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp of salt
- 2½ cup of flour
- In a mixer bowl, beat the butter until smooth.
- Add powder sugar and continue to mix. In a separate small bowl, beat egg.
- Mix in beaten egg, both extracts, salt, and flour until combined.
- Make dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap, and then flatten dough to a disc (this will help it to chill faster in the fridge.) Place dough in the fridge until hard.
- Preheat the 375 degrees.
- Once the dough is ready, place on a well floured surface and roll out to ¼ inch thickness.
- With cookie cutter, cut into shapes and place them on a greased sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes until set, do not allow to brown.
- Place cookies on wire rack to cool.
- This makes around 20-24 cookies.
Source- Adapted from Annie’s Eats
K’s tip- To make multiple batches, I just repeat the instruction for the dough and make right after the first (This way it doesn’t mess with the recipe by doubling it and you don’t have to dirty more dishes.
For Royal Frosting- follow this recipe and tutorial on how to use royal icing from Annie’s Eats (aka my favorite blog- I have got sister M hooked on Annie’s blog too.) The tutorial is actually how I learned how to decorate a cookie correctly with royal icing. It does take a while and you will have to practice. The results will make you proud though!
I couldn’t just show you just one cookie after all my hard work…
Merry Christmas Everyone!
-K
They look so beautiful that I feel guilty eating them, butI did and they tasted as wonderful as they looked!!!