Sugar Cookie Cut Outs

Sugar cookies are the best. You can make them for any occasion. I have more cookie cutters than I have space for, but who doesn’t love cute looking cookies at every holiday? As you will probably notice in the pictures, when I made these recently, I used a variety of shapes. Sugar cookies are so simple and fun to decorate. I know as a kid I always loved making and decorating these with my mom.

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Sugar Cookie Cut Outs

Ingredients:

• 3/4 Cup Unsalted Butter (Softened)
• 3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 Egg
• 2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
• 1 Teaspoon Almond Extract
• 2 1/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Frosting:

• 1 Can Vanilla Frosting
• 1 Cup Powdered Sugar
• 4-5 Teaspoons Milk

Directions:

1. In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

2. Cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the egg, beat well after this addition. Next, add the vanilla and almond extracts.

3. Gradually add in the flour, baking powder, salt mixture. Once combined, the dough should be well-formed and not be sticky to the touch.

4. Chill the dough in your refrigerator for at least 1 hour. Once it has been chilled, remove from the fridge. The dough may be hard, so let it sit for a minute or two.

5. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

6. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the dough out into whatever shapes you desire.

7. Place your cut outs on the baking sheet about one inch apart. These will not spread out at all so they don’t need to be spaced very far apart.

8. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. These cookies will puff up slightly. You will want to remove them from the oven before they get to dark, so after about 8-9 minutes, keep a close eye on them.

9. Allow cookies to cool on a wire cooling rack. Once cooled you can begin to frost them.

For my cookies, I combined a store-bought can of frosting with some milk so that the frosting was thin enough to use a flooding technique. You can frost them however you would like though!

Frosting Flooding:

10.  For the flooding technique, you will want to mix a little bit-maybe 2-3 Tablespoons  of the store-bought frosting with a teaspoon of milk. The frosting should be thin enough to pipe, but not so runny that it spreads out.

11. Fill a piping bag and pipe around the edge of the cookie. Outline the edges of all your cookies.

12. Next you will want to add an additional 1-2 teaspoons of milk to get the frosting even thinner.  Using a spoon, or piping bag, starting with the center of each outlined cookie, fill the cookie with frosting and spread it so that it is evenly coated all the way to the edge. If there are any air bubbles in your frosting, use a toothpick to pop them!

13. Let the cookies sit out on a flat surface until the frosting has hardened, then store in an air tight container.