Butter Cookie Recipe

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour

Preheatoven to 375° F. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add baking powder and flour - one cup at a time, mixing after addition. The dough will be very stiff; blend last flour in by hand. Do not chill. Roll out (I did it in batches) to about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick.

Bake 8-10 minutes.

Makes 2-3 dozen cookies
*Chelsea's tip: The key is not to overcook them. Once they start puffing a bit, they're usually done and they won't usually brown at all. I use my SilPat when baking and the bottoms don't brown either.

It also says not to chill, but I did just a little bit because I wasn't going to use it right away... either way, it works really well not chilled at all. Use powdered sugar to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin and/or surface.

For the icing...well, I kind of combined recipes and did my own thing, but here's a guesstimate of what I did.


Powdered Sugar Icing.

6 cups powdered sugar (I just kept the bag handy and added until the right consistency)
1/4 c butter
2 tsp. almond or vanilla extract. I prefer almond with these cookies, but it's your call
1/4 cup milk, plus more for the right consistency.

Basically, combine butter and about 2 cups of the powdered sugar. Then add the almond extract and some milk. Then alternate until you get a good amount of frosting with a spreadable (it should coat the spatula/spoon but still 'flow'). Then you'd divide your frosting for coloring, add the coloring and probably a bit more powdered sugar for piping. The trick is to get the thicker piping icing the same color as the flooding icing. It takes some practice. For piping I just use a round decorating tip in the corner of a freezer-safe (they're thicker) ziploc bag. The disposable frosting bags aren't big/durable enough and I don't want to bother cleaning the non-disposable kind.
*here's a tip: When trying to put icing in the bag, it helps to use a tall cup or glass and put the bag, tip down, it is. Fold the top of the bag over the top of the cup to secure. Super easy to fill.

Anyways, pipe the thicker icing as an outline on each cookie and then use the thinner icing to flood the outline.

Happy Baking!