Sugar Cookies

Do these not look delicious? Well they are! I just L-O-V-E sugar cookies. They are definitely something that calls me. So anyways, I wanted to make something that could be sold at the Hooley today. What is a "Hooley" you ask? Well, it is a money making, food-eating, beer-drinking (by some), dancing, etc., party that is held before the SAPADAPASO Parade. SA (Saint) PA (Patricks) DA (Day) PA (Parade) SO (Society) is the host/sponsor of the party and the parade. My family is deeply involved, from being a volunteer that helps with staging at the parade, to crowd control, to being a part of the organizers. My Dad and bonus Mom, my brothers and sisters, my daughters, my aunt, uncle, cousins, nieces, nephews....and the list goes on and on. Let's just say there is alot of "Davis" blood, sweat and tears involved in each year's parade.

So back to the purpose of this post. I wanted to making something to be sold at the Hooley and it needed to be green and tasty. I decided cookies would fill the need. I had bought shamrock cookie cutters last year so I went with sugar cookie cut-outs. So on Friday night I'm flipping through cookbook after cookbook trying to decide what recipe to use. I found one that I had written in the margins, "Very good, 4/01". And so I decided to go with it. The recipe name just said "sugar cookies", it did not say "cut outs". So I started out trying to roll it with a rolling pin and that did not work at all. The dough just stuck to the roller, regardless of how much flour I put on it. I then noticed the recipe said to roll it into balls, so this was meant to be more of a "drop" cookie. Now I understood. So I tried patting the dough out with my hands and it worked like a charm. I divided the dough into sections and then after I did my cut-outs would re-wad it up and pat it out again. I was able to do that over and over with no problems. (Usually with cut-outs it starts getting difficult as you keep adding more flour.) The important thing was to make sure the dough was cold and sparingly use the flour.

Here is the recipe I used:

Sugar Cookies (St Ludmila Parish Cookbook)

1 cup margarine or butter
1 cup shortening
1 cup powdered sugar (plus more for rolling the balls)
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp cream of tartar

Cream first 4 ingredients together; add eggs and vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients. Chill dough 1 hour. Roll dough into balls. Roll balls in powdered sugar. Place on cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes 5-6 dozen medium sized cookies.

I did NOT roll the dough into balls. I sectioned off the dough and patted it out on a floured board and used a cookie cutter.

Powdered Sugar Glaze

1 Tbsp water
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar

Mix together and add food coloring if desired. I had to quadruple this recipe to frost all my cookies.

This is the board I used. You can see my shamrock cookie cutter if you look close!

I would pat out the dough with the palms of my hands, doing one section at a time.

Make sure that you don't get it too thin, or leave it too thick.

The cookies puff up nicely so make sure there is plenty of room between them.

I left them on the pan for 1-2 minutes to cool and then put them on a wire rack to finish cooling.

Here are they are - waiting to be frosted!

Make sure you let them dry for a couple hours then storage won't be a problem.

This is a great recipe and now that I've found it (again) I will be using it alot. I have lots of cookie cutters and I like to make cookies that go with special days. These were super easy and I actually liked patting them out rather then rolling them. And did I mention...they are delicious!