D*Tales: Christmas Sugar Cookies

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is making Christmas cookies with my family. This is the absolute BEST sugar cookie recipe I’ve ever come across. With only 6 ingredients, they’re so easy to make, and the recipe usually yields about 6 dozen sugar cookies.

The cookies are plain, and not very sweet, which I love. This also means that they hold up really well to frosting, sprinkles, and other decorations. Out of all the Christmas cookies we make, these are always gone first. Who doesn’t love a Christmas cookie?!

I find these cookies taste the best on the 3^rd or 4^th day after you make them. It’s become a tradition at my parents’ house to have sugar cookies and mimosas while we open presents Christmas morning. Talk about a breakfast of champions!

Recipe:

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix baking powder and flour; add one cup at a time, mixing after each addition. The dough will be very stiff; blend last flour in by hand. Do not chill dough. On floured surface, roll each ball into a circle approximately 12 inches in diameter and 1/8 an inch thick. Dip cutters in flour before each use. Bake cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet on top rack of oven for 5-6 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.

Now, on to the more topical Christmas cookies. It all began several years ago when my brother made a rather risqué snowwoman with huge snowboobies. In response I made a rather excited little snowman myself. Seeing my mother’s response to our perverted little snowpeople (seriously…what kind of kids were we?), I decided to decorate a cookie to look just like my mom. It was hilarious and when I saw how well it turned out, I wanted to see who else I could “cookify” and from there it was a natural progression into celebrities. Now, every Christmas, I create a variety of celebrities in cookie form. The people from pop culture who were in the news and on magazine covers, the ones who drove us crazy but we couldn’t stop talking about, and our favorite historical figures, politicians, and characters from movies and TV shows.

Over the years we’ve had the Pope, Hitler (Mom did NOT like that one), a deceased Steve Irwin complete with stingray (a little grotesque, but funny when in cookie form), Obama, Sarah Palin, John Edwards (with arms broken off and glued back on with frosting, courtesy of my brother), and many others. Scroll below to see this year’s batch!