Snowflake Cookies!

My mom and I had cookie making day (a couple, actually). These were not the creme da la creme, but I won't be making the really pretty ones until closer to Christmas, and y'all need to be making your cookies now!

If you hadn't figured it out by now, when preparing for gatherings, it's *always* a good idea to do as much as you can ahead of time - especially at Christmas. Just making your cookies, stick them (un-iced) in the freezer, then decorate them closer to the day they will be presented.

For these you can use your favorite cutout recipe.  For the icing there are several options.  You could use royal icing, candy coating, your favorite homemade icing. . . or. . . as I did in this case. . . cheat a little and use icing from a can.  Hey, after all that baking and cleanup, I'd had about enough.  Besides, these were the cookies that came out imperfect (from me being in a hurry). I'll do better on the ones that get taken to parties.

I got two cans of vanilla buttercream icing and dyed one light blue.  Spread that over your snowflakes. I put white icing in a plastic sandwich bag, cut the tip off, and piped it out for the decorations. They would be pretty sprinkled with decorating sugar, too.

My recipe:

1 cup butter, room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 eggs
5 - 5 1/2 cups flour

*Note: there is no baking soda or powder in the recipe.  That is how they keep their shape so well, but you could add a teaspoon of each if you like a lighter cookie.

Cream the butter and cream cheese. Add the sugar, salt, vanilla, almond, and eggs.  Beat until fluffy. Using a dough hook, add the flour one cup at a time.   Once the dough is mixed, refrigerate for two hours.

Heat oven tto 375°.

Roll dough out in portions to 1/8 inch. Cut out. Place cookies on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for ten minutes. Re-roll your scraps.

I got 5 1/2 dozen large snowflakes from this recipe. It leaves plenty of room for extra flour so no dough gets wasted with re-rolling.

Eat and enjoy! :D

Mom's snowflakes

More of Mom's cookies. Good times! :D