Doll House Cutout Cookies

by EliNicole
(Vallejo, CA, USA)

Growing up this was my mom's holiday treat for almost EVERY holiday. She used cookie cutters in all kinds of shapes depending on the holiday. Clovers for St. Patty's day, hearts for Valentine's, black cats and pumpkins for Halloween, and turkeys for Thanksgiving....but on Christmas she goes all out. Christmas trees, snowmen, jingle bells, Santas, candy canes and snow angles. The best most popular dessert at the holidays! Everyone LOVES my mom's cookies!

COOKIE DOUGH:

3/4 cup butter
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat butter on high. Add half of the flour, all of the sugar, eggs, baking powder and vanilla. Beat until combined. Stir in the remaining flour. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 2 hours.

So two hours later once the dough is chilled it's time to get rolling! Flour is your best friend! you'll be using lots of it to keep it from sticking to the area you are rolling the dough on and the rolling pin. Take a chunk and get a nice area covered in flour and roll out dough.

Use your chosen cookie cutters to cut out the desired shapes and place on an ungreased baking sheet/cookie sheet. Make sure they are about an inch or two apart.

BAKE at 375F (180C) degrees in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

Once they are done let cool for two minutes and then place on a cookie rack to fully cool (this was my least favorite part as a kid because all I wanted to do was DECORATE!...as a little girl and now it's my FAVORITE part!).

ICING:

3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
powdered sugar
milk

Notice there is no measurement for powdered sugar and milk? Yep, it's pretty much how ever much you want for the desired texture! To this day my mom is the only one that can get it right and yet even though mine's yummy I still wish it came out as good as hers).

So you beat the butter and vanilla together and then add the powdered sugar and milk to it and beat until you get the desired thickness.

CREATIVE TIME:

Once you get the desired thickness you can scoop some of that white icing into smaller bowls and add food coloring to accomplish different colors to make your cookies really come to life! We love to use all kinds of colors and decorations. Also other candies make great decorations too! M&Ms, jelly beans, red hots, mini chocolate chips. You can use tooth picks to blend colors, butter knife to spread the icing. It's all up to the persons own imagination!