christmas cut out cookies.

the holidaze have majorly put me on the procrast people. or maybe it's the fact that i ate about 50 dozen of the above or varities of the above. in retrospect it doesn't even seem possible to injest the amount of cookies i did in about 2 weeks. my cookie habit has become more than a habit, it's part of my day, every day now. it's to the point where 1pm rolls around, and i start looking for cookies in my office, my friend's house, whatever store i'm in, etc. 1pm is apparently one of the many cookie times of the day that i've become a faithful observant to. i will always practice at the church of cookies but for now, i need to take a break before little miss fat ass makes a full-fledged appearance. these cut out cookies however, were worth every single mile i will have to run, every protein bar i will now injest instead of said cookies, every glass of wine i will skip for delicious, refreshing water, etc. they will be back next holidaze season, but most likely not before that.

this recipe is my sister emily's take on my grandmother's recipe. she made them for our christmas gala and fully inspired me to take the plunge into the world of cut out cookies. be warned, these are semi-labor intensive and make a fully frustrating dough that is v. unfun to work with but more than delicious to eat!!

first off, your dough is:
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoons cream of tartar
1.5 teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups of flour

--first seems like standard cookie making mixing of course, cream butter and sugar, add vanilla, then eggs one at a time.
--add salt and cream of tartar to flour and set aside.

**now vital aspect of these cookies: mix baking soda into milk, this ensures that your cookies will PUFF in the oven into delicious cut outs. once mixed together add milk mixture to butter mixture.then add your flour mixture in stages, it's really a lot of flour. wow. four cups!dough should resemble this lovely mound of goodness.

let it chill for about 30 minutes in the fridge. since it's most likely christmas when you're making these you'll have way too much to get done in a reasonable amount of time. use this 30 minutes carefully, wrap presents, pack for home, remember you forgot sprinkles, run back to the grocery store for the third time in one day, attempt to clean apartment (ha!), try not to eat dough but make yourself a healthy salad, give up and sample dough and skip lunch thinking the calories will even out anyway. ok 30 minutes pass yet?

now comes the fun part, yes that is rolling out the dough. luckily if you're me you have a rolling pin. it would pretty much be pure insanity to try to make these cookies without a rolling pin because the dough is so finicky you will just end up eating the whole bowl and hiding the evidence. get a rolling pin.

so flour the surface you're going to roll your dough on and place a good section of dough on it. give it a good couple of wacks and form it into a circular shape. at this point start rolling in different directions till you get a thickness you're happy with. remember, since you did the whole baking soda/milk mixture thingie, your dough is gonna PUFF, these cookies will appear bigger then they seem in your mirrors.
now use your handy cutters to form delightful christmas cookie shapes. in my limited experience, the smaller cutters worked better in that i could actually lift the dough off of the counter without completely mangling the dough to an unrecognizable shape. some larger shapes, like the tree, were quite popular because they retained the integrity of their shape. the snowman, however, made very few appearances.
bake these at 375 for 10 minutes on an ungreased pan. repeat for what seems like forever, and you will get this bounty of cookies.
pretty ridiculous right? so totally worth it! these were a delicious hit among our friend/family crowd. but wait a minute, what are cookies without frosting? well they're not really worth having, so make a basic buttercream.

buttercream:
2 cups confectionary sugar
6 tablespoons of butter
3-4 tablespoons of milk
1.5 teaspoons of butter
frost and sprinkle in that order. if you have any friends, invite one over because it's much easier to do this part with a partner. otherwise you're the sprinkler and froster. i have never had both roles, and while it's makes me feel important of course, i missed just being the sprinkler as my mom frosted.mom always made cutouts, i even remember she made these the christmas season our entire family got this stomach flu from hell that left us all in our pjs for days, laying around looking like death warmed over, but still we had christmas cookies, frosted and sprinkled. mom always knew how to make the holidays:D

once frosted you should have cookies like these:
drink with lots of ice cold milk and pat yourself on the back. you've earned it.