Sugar Cookies

Today's recipe is for sugar cookies. Violet is going to cut them out with dog, cat and flower cookie cutters and decorate them with sugar sprinkles.

Ingredients:

3 cups flour
3/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 sticks butter (unsalted)
1 c sugar
1 egg
2-1/4 t vanilla
1 T milk
2 or 3 drops lemon or almond extract (optional, Violet opted no)

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into medium bowl, set aside. Cream butter and sugar in electric mixer until smooth and fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla, milk and lemon or almond extract Slowly mix in flour (man, oh man, oh man, is this easy with the stand mixer). Divide dough in half. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 1 hour.

(Or do like we did and stick it all in the freezer to use next week. We did this at Christmas time too. We made a batch and froze half the dough for 2 weeks. Then we had a second batch of fresh cookies when the first batch was gone.)

Roll dough on lightly floured surface to 1/8-inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Bake on sheets until firm in center and golden around edges. 350 F oven. About 6-10 minutes, ours take longer because we tend to use smaller cookie cutters and thicker dough.

This is a recipe we saved from the newspaper on December 1, 1999. The Chicago Tribune in case you are wondering. It is the best sugar cookie recipe I have ever tried. (I intend to try Ami's easy recipe sometime soon).

In other news, I'm working all weekend. But this time, I'm not killing myself to get the work done. I can't say a lot, since it is work and blogging about your job can be a real no-no. I intend to work hard. I will attempt to meet the deadline (that was randomly picked, that's the part I can't go into). But I have a feeling if I go nuts, work tons of extra hours, ignore my family (yet again), I'll get it done then the person who is to review it and finalize it, will sit on it for a week or more anyway.

Not going to happen this time my friends. If I get my part done, working a reasonable amount of hours each week, great. If not. What are they going to do about it? I'm tired enough not to care. And I've got cookies to supervise the baking of.