Holiday | spaghetti on bath night

I was feeling down that I hadn’t made Christmas cookies during the allotted weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Between being sick, sleepy, holiday parties and having a busy office, I didn’t have time. The weekend before New Years, I found time to whip my favorite rendition of cut out cookies and suddenly my world was complete again. It comes from an old Betty Crocker cookbook, and I love them. They come out fluffy and perfect every time.

Ingredients

Cookies

1 1/2 cups powered sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Easy Creamy Frosting

1-2 tablespoons half-and-half
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt

Start by mixing all the “wet” ingredients. Softened butter, powered sugar, eggs, vanilla and almond extract. Mix well. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients. Flour, baking soda, cream of tartar. Mix together. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet and mix until combined.

Place dough in a mixing bowl and place into a refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Once dough is chilled, take out about 1/4 of the dough and start rolling it on a floured surface.

Roll dough to about 3/16″ thick and start using your Christmas cookie cutters! I love mine; they are super old-school and make great sized cookies.

Bake cookies at 375 degrees for 7 – 8 minutes. Pull out cookies when they look nice and fluffy and a very, very light brown on the edges. You don’t want to overcook these babies; they’re the best soft!

While the cookies are cooling, start making your frosting. Mine again comes from the classic Betty Crocker cookbook. Combine all ingredients and mix together until smooth.

You can frost them with just the white frosting and maybe add sprinkles?

Or add some food coloring to make your cookies really pop! I personally like food coloring with no sprinkles, but enjoy them any way you like! Happy New Year, Friends! I may just wipe up another batch for Valentine’s day, too!

Holy Cow 2013, hold on! I still have a couple things (two more posts, to be exact) to talk about in 2012! :)

If someone would have said going into the medical field you might not be able to take off during the holidays, I might have reconsidered. Seriously. It’s the sacrifices I have to make and I’m glad my family and spouse understand. This year we only made it to St. Louis instead of our usual Christmas festivities in both Missouri and Wisconsin. In lieu of work, we were able to squeeze a couple of days in St. Louis with our family. We spent the weekend enjoying each other’s company, ate way too much, and laughed often. On Saturday morning, everyone got up to start the Christmas excitement of opening presents and climbing on presents.

The excitement of all the kiddos was so much fun to watch. It really never gets old!

Even our dogs got some love and presents!

After all the festivities, everyone went their separate ways. We drove back earlier than expected because of the weather forecast and spent Christmas day in Texas with our boys. I captured a couple more pictures of our festive house. We even got a little snow on Christmas day! White Christmas!! Yay!