Christmas Cookies

Whenever I am asked what food I would bring with me to a desert island, I always have to answer "COOKIES!"  Hands down my favorite food to eat, and also my favorite treat to bake.  Christmastime is a great excuse to get my bake on and I take full advantage!

Several years ago, we started a cookie decorating tradition, just for 5 of us.  I bake a bunch of cut-out cookies and we spend hours listening to Christmas music, making a huge mess of icing and sprinkles, taste-testing our creations, and just soaking up some family togetherness.

I bake the cookies a day or so in advance.  These recipes are in my recipe binder from years ago, and I don't even remember where I found them!  They are tried and true, hard to mess up, quick, easy and don't require refrigeration before baking.  My kind of cookies!

You can see from the stains on the pages how much love they have been given (and how much love we have received from eating them!).

I like that this recipe calls for salted butter.  I ALWAYS use salted butter (gasp!) when I bake.  

I also don't freeze for 5 minutes before baking.  I'm such a rebel sometimes.

My son is allergic to tree nuts so I use all vanilla extract.  

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I follow this recipe pretty closely, with the exception of salted vs unsalted butter.  Am I alone in liking a bit of a saltier sweet?

Also, no need to freeze them for five minutes, but go ahead and do it if you're a rule-follower.

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For the icing, I mix powdered sugar with milk until it's a good consistency.  Go easy on the milk!  Much easier to add a bit more milk than to run out to the store to buy more powdered sugar.  We use a variety of food coloring to make fun colors.  I put them in individual ramekins or plastic cups and we use plastic knives to spread the icing on the cookies.  We have accumulated lots of sprinkles over the years, so I just add a few new ones as needed. ​

 I bought disposable cookie sheets this year and that turned out to be a great idea!  When finished, we just threw them in the recycle bin with all of the sprinkle mess! 

We always have so much fun doing this together!  Even our pup joined in this year.  I hope you give these recipes a try and share them with your family too!  Merry Christmas!  XO