Throughout my childhood, this was our one must have cookie for cookie decorating. Mama would make a huge batch so we all had plenty to decorate. She cut them in shapes of trees, stars, and reindeer and each of us got our own platter full. She mixed up red, green, and yellow icing and always had plenty of sprinkles to go on top! They will be “wet” right after icing and decorating but if you wait an hour or so they will dry enough to be stacked in a cookie jar.
Mama used to clip coupons, send in rebates, and scrimp and save all year long to help buy us presents. Quite often, our favorite toys were from send in offers and rebate checks. My favorite gift as a child was a little plastic baby doll who came with her very own tiny bar of Ivory soap! I’ll never forget how special that baby was or how much I enjoyed getting to give her a bath with her soap. I also remember coca cola flavored lip gloss, but my younger sister got a hold of mine and ate it, guess that flavor was convincing! Note to Patti: You owe me Coca Cola lip gloss this year.
As much as I loved that doll, though, my best holiday memories as a child were decorating these cookies and all of the other little arts and crafts that Mama did with us to help make the house festive. It seemed we were always busy, up to something, and having a wonderful time together. 
You’ll need: Milk, Shortening, Baking Powder, Vanilla, Salt, Sugar, Flour and Eggs.
I am making a double recipe. One recipe will yield about two dozen average sized cookies. I tend to make mine a bit larger though.
Combine sugar, shortening, milk, and vanilla in mixing bowl.
Cream together.
Add eggs and mix well.
until it looks like this!
In a separate bowl, place flour and add your baking powder…
And salt.
Whisk that together until combined. The recipe says to sift but I don’t like to have to deal with getting my sifter out so this is my way 🙂
Add the dry mixture to your creamed mixture.
Mix until well combined.
Divide dough and chill for at least one hour. I made a double recipe so I just put mine in three sandwich bags. If you are in a hurry, pop it in the freezer for about fifteen minutes and it will be just fine.
Whenever I make cut out cookies, I like to line my counter top with waxed paper for less mess. Dust waxed paper lined counter top with flour.
Place a portion of your chilled dough on top. Dust the top with flour again. With a little bit of flour in your hand, run it over your rolling pin to keep it from sticking to the dough.
Roll the dough out to about 1/8 of an inch (I prefer mine to be about 1/4 of an inch – I’m such a rebel!)
Spray baking sheet with cooking spray.
Cut out cookies…
Be careful not to tear them when you pick them up. I use this really thin cookie spatula I have.
Place on greased cookie sheet.
The dough scraps can be balled up together and rolled out again. I usually only do this once and after the second cutting I throw that dough away. If you keep balling it up and rolling it out, it will get “piece-y” and you’ll start having layered cookies. Just try it a few times and you’ll see what I mean!
Bake for 6-8 minutes. They will still look a lot like they did when they were uncooked, but puffed up slightly and if you look you’ll see just a hint of browning around the bottom.
This is only a teeny tiny portion of my sprinkles and sugars collection. I have an entire storage bin of them!
Gather together some sprinkles and colored sugars for decorating.
Place 1 T of margarine or butter (well softened) in each of three bowls (if you want three different colors of icing).
We ALWAYS had three different colors because there were three of us. 🙂
Add confectioner’s sugar, milk, and flavoring.
Cut that together with a fork. You are really just mooshing it.
until it is smooth and creamy. Feel free to add another tablespoon of milk if you need to.
My mother recommends using squirt butter for this but if you don’t have that just use regular margarine like I did. Since this is a poured icing, you can melt the margarine a bit in the microwave if it is too lumpy.
Dye each bowl and stir until the colors are even.
What I do is lay out a sheet of waxed paper for everyone and put cookies on top of it.
Then I give everyone three spoons so they have one for each icing color.
Just drizzle your icing on the cookie with a spoon, spread it around and sprinkle!
I let my kids pretty much do whatever they want with their cookies. This isn’t a time to produce a “perfectly” decorated cookie, its a time to let kids do it their way and be proud of their creations! They LOVE This part!
Kinda like this. Allow cookies to sit out for an hour or two, until they are completely dried.
Then you can store them in a cookie jar or other airtight bin, stacked on top each other.
Arrange on a plate and enjoy!
Ingredients
- 2/3 Cup shortening
- 3/4 Cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 4 teaspoons milk
- 2 Cups plain flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Icing
- 1 Cup confectioner's sugar
- 1 Tablespoon softened butter or margarine
- 2 Tablespoon milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla or butter flavoring
Instructions
- Thoroughly cream shortening, sugar, and vanilla. Add egg; beat until fluffy. Stir in milk. Sift dry ingredients; stir in and blend. Divide dough in half, chill 1 hour.
- On floured surface, roll half of dough to 1/8 inch thick. Keep remaining dough chilled until ready to roll. Cut into shapes. Bake on greased cookie sheet at 375 for 6-8 minutes. Cool slightly, remove from pan. Cool and decorate with cookie icing.
To make Icing
- In bowl, mix all ingredients together with fork. If too dry, add a little more milk. Once mixed, add a few drops of food coloring.
Mama always made three recipes of this so there would be three different colors. She prefers to use squirt margarine in place of butter for easier blending.
Nutrition
Yum. We always did decorated sugar cookies too. I like your frosting recipe because it gets dry and can be stacked.
If you roll out your dough between 2 sheets of waxed paper or parchment paper, and place them in the freezer for 15 minutes, the cookies will cut out very easy. if you put the cut cookies on a cookie sheet and stick them back in the freezer for 15 minutes before they are baked, they will keep their shape better, especially if you have a detailed cookie cutter. you can re-roll the scraps of dough between the wax paper, and repeat the process until all the dough is used, and you wont get any tough cookies because you wont be rolling in any extra flour, and it never sticks to the rolling pin. I have been doing it this way for 6 years, and my cookies always look so pretty and are easy to decorate.
Our holiday season started with an old recording on vinyl of the Littlest Angel. It was very special. My mom use to store it way up high on a book shelf and only get it down for the holidays. Can you imagine 5 little kids sitting around the record player listening intently in the livingroom of our house?
I make my cutouts using the Spritz recipe in the red and white check cookbook. It is a nice size dough and the almond flavoring adds a richness to the recipe. As did my grandmother I only use butter in it. My grandmother use to brag about how many pounds of butter she would use during the holidays–12 to 14 pounds. Anyone who visited her during the holidays left with her latest assortment of baked creations.
Waste not, want not. Who said the leftover dough has to be thrown out or has to be in some special shape? Instead of throwing it out after the second cutout, just take the leftover dough and bake them also. I’m sure they will taste just as good as the ones that have been cut with a cookie cutter. Beside it gives us something to nibble on while the kids are decorating theirs.
My mother would roll the extra pie crust or cookie dough out and brush it with melted butter, sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar. She would roll it up jelly roll fashion and slice it. She baked those and we got to eat our “cinnamon rolls” warm, straight out of the oven. The cookies could wait, but the “cinnamon rolls” were devoured immediately.
Your mom wasn’t the only one who did the rebates and got little gifts for the kids. I did that and my children enjoyed the things that they got. Some of them were really nice and they were great stocking stuffers. We also did arts and crafts before Christmas to make things for the house. Guess back then you didn’t run to the store and buy everything. I know we didn’t because we didn’t have the money, but we made memories this way.
Grandma Jenkins was the cookie maker when I was a child. We got to decorate Christmas cookies & I always wanted to work on the Leaping Reindeer cookies, you know, the reindeer whose legs are outstretched like he’s flying? I still buy reindeer ornaments if they are “leaping,” Grandma also decorated little round cookies with cherry halves or walnut halves. Yummy memories. =^..^=
ohhhh my,, does this bring back memories! I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s and we made these cookies also. When I was a teenager, it was the VietNam era and I had several cousins and penpals that I sent ‘care packages’ to and these cookies were always a part of those. I always got back such sweet letters from ‘the boys’ for that special touch of home.