It's Christmas! Day 22: Baking Cookies

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Today, we are preparing for Santa’s visit in just a few short days by baking some cookies. We’ve decided to go for the traditional sugar cookies (hopefully decorated beautifully!). But, decorations are for tomorrow. Today, we’re just making the cookies. There is a sugar cookie recipe that I have used multiple times that I love. These taste a lot better than other sugar cookies I’ve had. I mean, not to toot my own horn...but toot toot!

So, first thing’s first, let’s get our supplies together. We’ll need cookie sheets, parchment paper, 1 cup measuring cup, 1 teaspoon measuring spoon, a rolling pin, 2 mixing bowls, whisk, and electric beaters.
Then, we’ll get our ingredients together. We’ll need flour, baking powder, unsalted butter, sugar, an egg, and vanilla extract.

First we’re going to whisk together 3 cups of flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.
In a separate bowl, we’re going to beat together 1 cup of unsalted butter and 1 cup of sugar. Then, we’re going to add in an egg and some vanilla and then mix it up again.
Now, we’re going to slowly add in the flour mixture about a cup at a time. We want to mix our dough until it begins to clump together (possibly not using all the flour).
Then, we’re going to gather up our dough and knead it with our hands until it’s nice and smooth. We’re going to roll it into a ball, wrap it with plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge for about half an hour to chill. You want it to be a little firm, but not hard.
It’s time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees, take our dough out of the fridge, and roll it out. We’re going to cut shapes out with cookie cutters and place those on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
Then, we’re going to place these in the freezer for just a couple minutes to make sure they don’t lose their shape while they’re in the oven.
We’re just going to pop these in for about 8 minutes and just check on them from there. Cooking time will depend on the size and thickness of your cookies.

Now that these are done, we’re going to let them cool overnight. Come back tomorrow to decorate them with us! And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!