Christmas Cookie Help

Every year we decorate Christmas cookies as a family and give them away to the kids in our church.  One year we invited the kids over to have a cookie decorating contest, and then let them eat the cookies.  This year we invited the girls to decorate cookes at church  while the boys went out and collected food for the orphanage.  We had a blast!  The girls did a great job and I am looking forward to eating them at our Christmas party; but maily this post is to share with you what I have learned over the years from baking cookies for Christmas.  I have now picked out my favorite recipe for Sugar cookes as well as my favorite icing to decorate them with.  This recipe for cookies tastes sort of like pop tart dough to me {which I like!}; but mainly I chose this recipe because it uses less eggs, it is a joy to work with ( the cookies hold their shape really well after they are cut and baked), and did I already mention that it tastes good! I chose this icing recipe because it is very easy and keeps a nice gloss, it also tastes good!

Cookie recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened

• 1 cup powdered sugar

• 1 egg

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon salt

• Tinted icings, colored sugars, edible glitter and nonpareils

Directions

• In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.

• On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4-in. thickness. Cut out with Christmas cookie cutters of your choice. *Using a floured spatula, transfer cookies to greased baking sheets.

• Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes. Cool completely on wire racks.

• Decorate cookies with frosting, sugars and candies.

*Tips: I prefer to lightly flour wax or parchment paper to roll my cooled dough onto for cutting. This allows me to “plop” the shape onto the cookie sheets. If necessary sometimes I cut the paper around the cut dough, then plop it onto the cookie sheet. This prevents me from disturbing the shape. I also line my cookie sheets with foil instead of greasing them in order to save my cookie sheets and my oil.   Another thing I like to do is cut a small shape inside of a shape and fill it with crushed hard candy after baking the cookies for about six or seven minutes.  I then return the cookies to the oven and let the candy melt for about three or four minutes.  This give me the stained glass window look inside a cookie. 

Icing recipe:

1 cup powdered sugar (C&H truly is the best; but others will work)
1TBS.  milk
1 TBS.  light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
assorted food coloring (drops or gell)

Directions

1.In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and almond extract until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup and/or milk 1 tsp. at a time. Keep in mind that the corn syrup is what allows the colors (when using dye) to stay nice a bright. Add flavoring to taste once you get the amount of icing you want before adding color.
2.Divide into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity. Dip cookies, or paint them with a brush.

This will ice about a dozen cookies.

Photos of our adventure

My Favorite!  She is really concentrating.

Un-decorated Christmas tree cookie pops!

Alliyah enjoyed eating all of her cookies.

Cookie icing color palate!

Patiently waiting to get started.

The brave boys who went out in the cold to get food for the orphans.