Christmas Cookies - Week One (Sugar Cookies)

All month we are sharing Cookie Recipes. While there are a lot out there. We are sticking to some that are easy to make and will probably use items you already have at home. Today we are focusing on Sugar Cookies. So there are a lot of cookie recipes out there. And there are a lot of Sugar Cookie recipes out there. I researched a lot of them before making a mixture of the ones I found. I used Spaceships and Laser Beams's two sugar cookie recipes: Grandma's Christmas Sugar Cookies, and Christmas Sugar Cookies for inspiration along with Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons recipe to come up with my own recipe.

Basic Sugar Cookies

3 cups of Flour

2 tsp of Baking Powder

1 cup of Sugar

1 cup of Softened Butter (Room Temperature)

2 Eggs

1 tsp of Vanilla Extract

1 - 3 tbsp of Milk (Depending on how dry your dough is)

I combined the dry ingredients first and then added the butter. I slowly worked the butter into the dry ingredients until there were no major clumps. Finally, I added the Eggs, and Vanilla and mixed well. Once it was mixed, the dough was very crumbly and wasn't staying together. To this, I slowly added Milk until it formed a much more stable dough. You will bake these cookies at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. (Keep in mind they may still be soft, they will harden as they cool.)

*Note: This dough can stay in the fridge for up to three days before use. Personally, I vacuum sealed the dough in a ball. Keep in mind if you do refrigerate, you will need to give the dough up to 20 minutes to come back to room temperature. Once it is warm enough you should have no issue rolling the dough into balls.*

**Note: I learned (as you will be able to see from the photos) that if you leave these cookies in balls the cookies stay much smaller without expanding as wide. This is exactly what you want, they also stay much softer this way!**

Above and Beyond Sugar Cookies

For the holidays, I doubled the recipe and divided it into four different doughs. I kept the same basic dough and only changed the additives. In one forth of the dough I added chopped up Mixed Nuts (roasted and unsalted), along with White Chocolate Chips and Sprinkles, in another forth I added Chopped up Walnuts and Chocolate Chips, in another forth I added Chopped up Walnuts and Butterscotch Chips, and for the final forth I divided that in half again. With the two halves, I left one plain and I added just Chocolate Chips to the other half.