Iced Sugar Cookies

This is the essential Christmas cookie. Simple buttery sugar cookies decorated with colorful icing, and just perfect for those festive cookie cutters that you have waiting patiently in the drawer 364 days out of the year.

I am not really one of those people who gets excited about things like Christmas cookies year after year. I mean, of course I want to eat them. But as far as making them, and cutting out cookie upon cookie into reindeers and trees and santas... well, it took having a kid to really see the fun in that. And now I have that kid, all aglow with the magic of Christmas. Thank goodness. It is wonderful to be able to channel her excitement.

 
 For this kind of classic recipe, I find myself turning to my ol' trustworthy Joy of Cooking. I just want something tried and true, that people turn to year after year. And here it is: the steadfast holiday sugar cookie.

 Iced Sugar Cookies

• 3 1/4 all-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 2 1/2 sticks (20 tbs) unsalted butter, softened

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 large egg

• 1 tb milk

• 1 tb vanilla

• 1/4 tsp lemon zest

1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar together until well blended. Add egg, milk, vanilla, and zest and beat until mixed.

3. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, and stir until smooth. Divide the dough in half, and place each half between two large sheets of wax paper. Roll out to a scant 1/4 inch thick. Keeping the wax paper in place layer the dough onto a baking sheet and place in the refrigerator for about 20-30 minutes.

4. Preheat oven to 375 and grease your cookie sheets. Peel away the top layer of wax paper. Cut out your cookies using your festive cutter of choice. With a spatula, transfer to the cookie sheets, spacing about 1 1/2 inches apart. Roll up the scraps and continue cutting out shapes until all dough is used. (You can refrigerate the dough if it becomes to soft to handle.)

5. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, just until the cookies are lightly golden on top, 6-9 minutes. Remove the cookie sheet to a rack and let stand until cookies firm slightly. Transfer cookies to racks to cool completely. Makes about 3 dozen cookies depending on cookie cutter size.

Quick Cookie Icing

• 4 cups powdered sugar

• 3-4 tbs water

Stir sugar and water together until smooth, adding more water or sugar as needed for the desired consistency. Add food coloring as you like.  Makes 1 cup.

Hazelnut Crescent Cookies

It is that time in Colorado when one day it is blustery and cold with snowflakes in air and then the next day it is 70 degrees and sunny. We have to check the weather channel in the mornings to know whether a coat and mittens are appropriate, because it is possible that a simple long-sleeved tee will do the trick. But whatever you are wearing, you walk into Target and you are greeted with large displays proclaiming that the holidays are coming! Quick, buy something! Gifts! Lights! Wreaths!

I am happy to say that I haven't bought a single thing. I haven't even hung the wreath on the door. But I have done something far more important: I have made some holiday cookies.

 These types of nut cookies have always been favorites of mine. I like that you can easily sub out the nut if you don't happen to have the one called for. (Hazelnuts are so delicious, but pecans would also be perfect.) Their shortbread-y texture means that they practically melt on your tongue. And I don't know what it is about that quick roll in the powdered sugar that they get, but they just look and taste festive.

 

My 3-year-old has been begging me to make cookies lately. I'm sure she would have preferred that I work some chocolate chips into the recipe somehow, but she still had a lot of fun shaping the cookies into little crescent moons. If I didn't watch closely, she would simply ball them up and put them on the cookie sheet. "Full moons," she explained. 

Hazelnut Crescent Cookies

Adapted from Food & Wine

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

• 1 cup confectioners' sugar, divided

• 3 large egg yolks

• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

• 3/4 cups hazelnuts

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F.

2. Grind your hazelnuts in a food processor until finely ground. (The original recipe called for blanched hazelnuts, but I didn't have them and unblanched worked just fine.)

3. Place parchment paper on two cookie sheets. In a large bowl, use a mixer to beat the butter with 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, vanilla, and salt, and beat until blended. Beat in flour and ground hazelnuts.) Cover the dough and refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes.

4. Use about 2 tbs of dough for about each cookie, and roll them and shape them into crescent shapes. As you shape, place each cookie on the trays, about an inch apart from each other. Bake the cookies for about 18 minutes, until lightly browned. Let them cool until ready to handle (5 minutes or so).

5. Spread the remaining 1/2 cup of confectioners' sugar in a shallow bowl. Gently dip each cookie into the sugar and coat evenly. Transfer cookies to wire racks and let them cool completely. Makes about 20 cookies.