Grandma Hall's Sugar Cookies!

Well, here it is! The famous Sugar Cookie recipe! This is from my great-grandma Hall, and it's been a Christmas staple in our family for many generations! I hope you get as much use out of this recipe as we have!!!

Justin bought some cookie cutters a few weeks ago and wanted to make some special Christmas cookies. He bought a lab, a palm tree, a starfish, an elephant and a triceratop. Hmmm.... Christmas triceratop cookies?!?! That's what Justin wanted, so that's what we did!! My favorite is the starfish!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter- room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 well beaten egg

1 tbs. cream

1 tbs. vanilla

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

Method:

Cream together butter and sugar. When it's nice and creamed, add in the egg, cream and vanilla. ** NOTE** Mama Jean says it's very important to use GOOD vanilla. Don't use imitation vanilla, use good, high quality, natural vanilla extract. It will make all the difference in the world, and will make the cookies taste super delicious!!! When that's all mixed well, add the flour, salt and baking soda until it's all well incorporated. Mold the dough into a ball and wrap in wax paper and refrigerate over night. If you don't have time to let it sit in the fridge overnight, try to refrigerate for a few hours, or pop it in the freezer for a few hours. It's best to work with when it's cold.

When it's chilled, take it out of the fridge and taste it. Seriously. Taste some of the dough. I like it right out of the fridge, for some reason it's super tasty that way. Turn it out onto a floured surface and divide the ball into two sections (it's easier to roll when it's cold and in smaller sections). When your cookies are all rolled out and cut, bake them for 7-8 minutes at 350 degrees.

Let them cool completely before you frost them.

Here is Justin working on his cookies!

Some of the cookies waiting to go into the oven!

Boone wanted to help. Or just eat them all...

Justin is trying to feed a lab cookie to Boone, who is a lab. Sadly, Boone didn't get to taste any.

So, the frosting. There isn't actually a recipe for the frosting, I just know the ingredients, and I add them until the frosting is a consistency that I like. When Justin and I made his batch of Christmas cookies, I recorded the amounts of ingredients for you. I recommend cutting this recipe in half for frosting the cookies; I made way too much!!

My Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter- room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

7 cups powdered sugar

5 tbs. cream or milk (I use fat free half and half)

Method:

Cream together the butter and vanilla. Then add one cup of powdered sugar at a time, alternating with about one tbs cream. Keep adding one at a time until you have the consistency that you want. Again, this is what I did when Justin and I made cookies, but I will definitely cut this in half next time because it made way too much. If I was frosting 24 cupcakes however, this would be the perfect amount.

Our finished Christmas cookies! Yummmmmmm!!!!