With every major holiday comes another opportunity for my children and I to embrace a tradition that has taken place since I can remember. My mother and I use to sit around the kitchen table measuring, mixing, rolling, cutting and baking sugar cookies. And like my mother, I tend to collect an abundance of cookie cutters and decorations. My collection is so bad it gets an entire shelf in my kitchen.

Over the years, I’ve tried many different sugar cookie recipes but I always go back to the one that my mother used. It’s perfection that just can’t be fiddled with. If rolled thin, the cookies come out nice and crisp just as my mother likes them. If rolled thick, they have a softer texture that I prefer.

Classic Cut-Out Sugar Cookies (provided by Crisco Recipes ^[1])

Ingredients You’ll Need:

• 2/3 stick Crisco® Butter Shortening Sticks
• 3/4 cup sugar (I modified to 1 cup)
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I modified to 1 TBS)
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Let’s Get Baking!

1. COMBINE shortening, sugar, milk and vanilla in bowl of electric mixer; beat at medium speed until well blended. Beat in egg.
2. COMBINE flour, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Mix into creamed mixture at low speed until well blended. Cover and refrigerate several hours or overnight.
3. HEAT oven to 375ºF.
4. ROLL out 1/2 dough at a time to about 1/8-inch thickness on lightly floured surface. Cut out with cookie cutters. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Sprinkle with colored sugars and decors or leave plain and frost when cooled.
5. BAKE 7 to 9 minutes, or until set. Remove immediately to cooling rack.

Something new I found this year is this Red & Pink Striped Icing from Wilton ^[2]. At first, I thought it was just going to come out a swirly mess, but it actually turned out beautiful and fun to experiment with. I found a 2 pack of the striped icing tubes that came with decorating tips to add a border around the cookies and added names to our family cookies.