Recipe: Sugar Cookies

While baking pie last weekend, I found this set of cookie cutters with the batch of pie-making things my mom gave me years ago - and just in time for fall! To celebrate this unexpected find, I decided to bake some good old-fashioned sugar cookies.

While the dough was chilling in the fridge, I started mixing up some marshmallow fondant for decoration. The colors didn't come out as poppy as I'd have liked them to be, but that's because I only had regular food coloring on hand and not gel colors.

Classic Sugar Cookies

{What you'll need}

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

3 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

5 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt
cookie cutters

{Step 1}

In large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt.

{Step 2}

Cover and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). I like to dust the outside of my dough with a light layer of powdered sugar.

{Step 3}

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll out dough on parchment paper dusted with powdered sugar. I roll my dough out really thin because I like my cookies to have a nice crunch to them. Cut shapes with cookie cutters. Peel the dough away from shapes. Place shapes on greased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

{Step 4}

Decorate! Use your favorite frosting, fondant, or glaze. I decided to try out this recipe I found for marshmallow fondant. I halved it and added my color at the end so I could make multiple colors. I'd like to work with some other colors throughout the week - maybe buy some vodka so I can paint them! Because the fondant comes out so sweet, I'd drop down to 2 cups of sugar instead of 3 for the cookie dough.