Paul’s Christmas Cookies
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 2-½ cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup butter, softened
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp. whole milk
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. almond extract
- ½ tsp. salt
- 2 Eggs
For the Frosting:
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 4 tbsp. Crisco
- 2 tbsp. whole milk, plus more if needed
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp. salt
Instructions
To prepare the cookies:
- Into a large bowl, measure all ingredients.
- With mixer at low speed, beat ingredients until well blended, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula.
- Shape dough into a ball; wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 to 3 hours until easy to handle.
- When ready to bake cookies, remove some of the dough from refrigerator and pre-heat oven to 350°F.
- Grease a large cookie sheet.
- On a lightly floured surface, with floured rolling pin, roll one-third of the dough ¼-inch thick, keeping remaining dough refrigerated.
- With floured 3-½-inch round fluted cookie cutter, or cookie cutter of choice, cut dough into rounds.
- With a pancake turner, place rounds, 1-inch apart, on cookie sheet.
- Place in pre-heated oven and bake cookies for 12 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Remove from the oven and again with a pancake turner, remove cookies to wire racks to completely cool.
- Repeat with leftover dough.
- Once cookies have cooled, store cookies in tightly covered container.
To prepare the frosting:
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the confectioners’sugar, Crisco, the 2 tbsp. milk and salt, on low speed, until combined: about 1minute.
- Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Increase the speed to medium and beat until fluffy; about 3 minutes.
- If the frosting is dry, add more milk, 1 tsp.at a time, until it is creamy but still holds peaks.
- At this point, you can divide the frosting into smaller bowls and use food coloring to make decorative frosting.
To decorate the cookies:
- Decorate the cookies as desired.
- If using the squeeze bottles or piping tips, outline the cookies with icing first, then fill in the middle.
- If adding sprinkles on top of the icing, add them right after applying icing on the cookie.
- Let the icing dry/set; it dries in 24 hours.
- No need to cover the decorated cookies as you wait for the icing to set.
- If it’s helpful, decorate the cookies directly on a baking sheet so you can place the entire baking sheet in the refrigerator to help slightly speed up the icing setting.
- Once the icing has dried, these cookies are great for gifting or for sending.
- Cover and store decorated cookies for up to 5 days at room temperature or up to 10 days in the refrigerator.
Notes
The frosting recipe can be very easily doubled, tripled, etc.