Holiday Baking: Sugar Cookies

Baking is one of my favourite things, and I especially love holiday baking.  Besides fudge, sugar cookies are probably my most favourite thing to bake at Christmas time.  It's probably because of all the different cookie cutter shapes and fun decorations that can be used.  The part that I don't like is how much time it can take to make them: chilling the dough, rolling the dough, decorating and so forth.

While I've played with various sugar cookie recipes over the years, there's one that I always go back to.  Of course this year, excited to make sugar cookies with my 4 year old, I couldn't find the recipe I wanted to use.  And of course, with a baby in the house, time got the best of me.  So I turned to this great little recipe that also makes delicious sugar cookies.  The only difference is that there is no chilling time - you press the dough into moulds and bake away!

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Lightly spray the pan cavities with cookie spray.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended.  Beat in egg and extract; mix well.

3. Combine flour and salt; add to butter mixture.  Beat until well blended.

4. Press dough into cavities, filling 2/3 full.  Bake 9-10 minutes or until light brown around the edges.  Cool in pan 5 minutes.  Turn pan over to remove cookies.  Cool completely on cooling rack.

5. Decorate as you wish: dust with icing sugar, sprinkle with sugar crystals, colour with icing.

Note: To add to the festive nature of the season, I like to mix in red and green sugar crystals with the dough before baking.  It gives the cookies a nice pop of colour and they look lovely even without any decorations.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.