grandma jane’s sugar cookies

Decorating sugar cookies may be one of the most time consuming, high maintenance, annoying things that I LOVE TO DO!  I even look for excuses to do it year-round.  No Christmas-only-sugar-cookies for this girl!  Valentine’s Day, fundraisers, Bon Voyage and Birthday parties – I’m there cookies in hand :)

I’ve tried many a sugar cookie recipe but always come back to the tried and true version my Mom got from my Dad’s Mom when they got married.  Nothing fancy.  No freezing/ erroneous extra steps.  No special flours.  No exotic flavors (although adding a dash of lemon juice to these springs them up well).  Just GREAT taste, good ole “this’ll work” ingredients, and practical “I have a baby I’m trying to keep out of the cookie dough so can’t really agonize over these right now” sensible instructions.  Can’t beat it!

Grandma Jane’s Sugar Cookies
recipe from my Grandma Jane :)
makes 4-5 standard baking sheets of cookies depending on size of cutters

Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp milk
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder

Instructions
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2) Cream together butter and sugar.  Add in egg and beat.  Mix in vanilla and milk.  Add in flour and baking powder and stir until dough is well mixed.

3) If you want to actually cut out cookies (you can also simply roll dough in to small balls and flatten them on a cookie sheet with a flat-bottomed, sugar-dipped, glass for rounds!), roll out 1/3 of dough at a time on a clean dish towel sprinkled with flour (works so much better than a standard “floured surface” or even parchment paper… try it, you’ll never go back!).  Cut cookies as desired and repeat until all dough is shaped.  Place cut cookies on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

4) Bake cookies on top rack at 350 degrees for 9-12 minutes (time various significantly depending on the type of baking sheets you have, how thinly you rolled your dough, how big your cookies are, etc. so keep an eye on your first batch and take them out when they begin to brown around the sides).

5) Place cookies on dishtowel-covered counter top to cool for at least an hour before icing.  The icing I use on these is just milk, powdered sugar, and a hint of vanilla combined until I get the right consistency for what I’m doing decoration-wise :)