Every year since I was very little I have LOVED making sugar cookie cut outs for the holidays. I mix the little decorated cookies in with other traditional holiday cookies and deliver them to my neighbors. The only ones I ever get comments on are the little decorated gems. As the years have gone on I have tried to get fancier and fancier, adding in gold and silver dragees, and taking more and more time to decorate them. I have never been able to find a sugar cookie recipe that rolls really well and an icing recipe that dries hard and tastes good. I think this year I figured it out and the recipes are below. This year my daughter and a few of her eight-year-old friends also came over and helped. It was so cute to see how serious and slightly competitive they were.

I also bought a decorating kit by Kuhn Rikon that uses squeeze bottles instead of bags. It made decorating really easy, especially with kids. To get the icing easily into the bottles, spatula the icing into ziplocs by color, snip the very tip of the bag, and pipe it into the bottles.  The plastic containers you get at any grocery store salad bar also work great for kids to take their cookies home in.  You need to wait about an hour to let the icing dry and then you can set a paper towel in between the layers if you need to.

Sugar Cookie Cut Outs
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter
3 oz cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 Tbs. vanilla

Have all ingredients at room temperature.

Sift together flour and salt, set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter on medium speed for 1 minute. Add the cream cheese and continue beating until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar, increase the speed to medium high and beat until fluffy and pale yellow, about 3 minutes. Beat in the egg yolk, then add the vanilla.

Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in 3 additions, beating in each addition before adding more. Beat just until combined, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Turn the dough out on a floured surface. Using floured hands, form the dough into a smooth mound and divide into 2 portions. Shape each into a disk and wrap separately with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to 2 days.

Remove 1 dough disk at a time from the refrigerator and let stand for 10 minutes. Place the dough on a floured work surface and roll out to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Cut out with cookie cutter of your choice and place on baking sheet. If you are having a hard time rolling out the cookies try making them thicker or allowing the dough to chill in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake until golden on edges, 10 to 14 minutes.

Royal Icing
1 pound confectioners’ sugar
5 Tbs meringue powder
1-2 tsp. of almond or lemon extract
1-2 tsp. of imitation butter extract (I didn’t even know there was such a thing)
1 tsp. of good vanilla
about a ½ cup water

Combine the sugar and meringue powder in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Add 1 teaspoon and lemon or almond extract and 1 teaspoon of the butter extract and a quarter cup of water. Mix on low speed until you have reached the desired consistency and taste, about 7 minutes. If icing is too thick, add more water; if too thin, beat icing 2 to 3 minutes more. Add more extract or vanilla as you feel needed. The icing should form stiff peaks.

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