CHRSISTMAS SUGAR COOKIES
These thin sugar cookies were my family's traditional sugar cookies around Christmas. It is very thin and decorated with colored sugars. They are a very unusual cookie, not at all like the fat sugar cookies with the icing that are around now so much. These cookies are a labor of love as rolling them out is challenging.
My oldest sister now makes these cookies every Christmas. We all go over to her house before Christmas and she rolls out the dough and we all decorate the pans of cookies with colored sugars. Then we have lunch that she serves. And then she always has a little gift for all of us to take home with us. It is often lotions or nice soaps, but this year it was a Swedish Dishcloth.
I never miss the cookie day, and now travel almost 1000 miles to get there in time to help decorate them. All of my sisters, and now our grown children all help to decorate these cookies. Even my other sister’s mother-in-law comes to help. She is the nicest person on the planet. It is just a really nice time spent with family.
When I was little these were the sugar cookies my Mom would make for our Christmas Eve Christmas. We had our Christmas on Christmas Eve as we went to church on Christmas morning. My Dad told us that Santa liked us best so came to our house first. These are very thin sugar cookies decorated with colored sugars.
INGREDIENTS
1 Cup Vegetable Shortening
1 ½ Cups Sugar
2 Large Eggs
2 Tablespoons Milk
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
2 ½ Cups Flour
½ teaspoon Baking Powder
½ teaspoon Salt
DIRECTIONS
Cream together shortening, sugar and eggs. Add milk and vanilla extract. Mix well.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Add this mixture to the first mixture and mix well.
Chill the dough for 2 to 3 hours or overnight.
Roll out cookies in a mixture of powdered sugar and a bit of flour to a very thin cookie, you can almost see through the dough. Rolling this out is the hard part.
Cup out with cookie cutters and place onto parchment covered baking sheets. Cut into desired shapes and decorate with colored sugars.
Bake at 425 degrees F for 2 to 4 minutes (they cook really quickly because they are so thin. This recipe makes about 10 dozen cookies.
