Christmas has mostly been a weird time for me. Not many of them were pleasant times of the year. There was always one thing I did look forward too though. My dad and I would make cookies. We’d do cutout sugar cookies and spritz cookies. It was our thing. There were years we didn’t do it. Then my mom got sick. That first Christmas we all did. It was great. This year was a totally different story. In previous years when the family wasn’t doing it my friends and I would get together to do it. This year that didn’t happen either. I was digging through some recipes I had and found this one. It’s close enough to Valentines and our anniversary so we popped back into the kitchen together for the second time. I have no idea where this recipe came from hence the name The Unknown Sugar Cookie. If I ever figure it out I’ll go ahead and update this and give credit.

I seriously suck at doing anything artsy. Decorating is not my forte. It’s all just not my jam. I’m too hard on myself for it as well. Most of my friends however are amazing artists in their own way. Monster Maker (the partner in crime/witch), Ceramics (the long time best friend), Computer Graphics (the Paki). Then there’s me. The best thing I’ve done was a cardinal, when I was in fifth grade, or a perspective piece with a tornado, when I was in seventh grade.

As I mentioned before I’m not really sure where this recipe comes from. It has worked very well every time. With the large amount of baking powder these get very fluffy and spread out a decent amount. Because of that I don’t recommend cookie cutters that have fine details as you’ll probably lose them. As you can see some of the hearts turned into butts. But hey who doesn’t like a nice butt? For the frosting the original recipe called for water instead of milk but that seemed a bit weird to me. I’m not sure why it felt weird but it did. I swapped water for milk and it worked well. You can easily double or half that recipe. If you’re going to try and get more colors for your decorating desires then I’d probably make more. Go wild. Live a little. We can’t all be perfect all the time, and we don’t get better at things without trying them once in a while.

Ingredients

Cookies:

1 Cup (2 sticks) of unsalted butter at room temp
1 1/2 Cup confectioners sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
2 1/2 Cups of All Purpose Flour (called for self rising but I made my own - thanks King Arthur)
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Frosting:

2 1/2 Cups confectioners sugar
1/4 Cup 2% milk - or whole
Food coloring if desired
Sprinkles and other decorating bits

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Cream the butter and confectioners sugar until fluffy 2-4 minutes
Beat in the egg and vanilla
In a separate bowl add the flour, baking powder, and salt to mix to combine
slowly add this in batches to the wet ingredients. Mix to incorporate
Take 2 sheets of plastic wrap, divide the dough in half, and wrap each half in 1 piece of plastic wrap
Refrigerate for at least 2 hours
Take the dough out and lightly flour a work surface
Roll out the dough to between 1/2 and 3/16 inch
Cut out all the fun shapes you want and place on a parchment lined baking tray
Bake the cookies for 11 minutes until just golden on the edges, let sit on the pan for 2 minutes, remove to a cooling rack to cool
For the frosting - mix the confectioners sugar and milk until smooth. Add any food coloring and decorate