This is the recipe that I grew up with. My mom used to make these delicious sugar cookies every Christmas. Now, my kids are rolling out the dough and cutting shapes from the same recipe. We all agree…the almond-flavored frosting just smells like Christmas to us.
The flavor of this sugar cookie has always been “the flavor of Christmas” at our house. Now, anytime my kids smell almond extract, it transports them to a cozy kitchen filled with Christmas cookies.
Although, I use an old recipe handed down from my mom, I did change a couple of items in my mom’s recipe. The original cookie was delicious, but it always puffed up too big. The cookies on the baking pan looked like one big blob. To make the cookie hold their shape a little better, I took out one of the eggs and the baking soda. You know what? The flavor is still the same and now we can actually tell what our cookies are supposed to resemble.
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Here are some tips for rolling out the Sugar Cookie Dough
- Make sure the dough is nice and cold – as it warms, the dough will spread out and it won’t hold the shape of the cookie cutter
- It helps to only bring out portions of the cookie dough – a little at a time from the refrigerator. Keep the dough you are not working with cold and bring it out when you are ready for it
- Roll the dough right onto parchment paper or a silicone mat. If you follow this little tip – There is no worry in transferring your creation to the baking mat
- Place wax paper over the dough when rolling. Roll right over the wax paper. When you are done rolling, the wax paper easily lifts off and you don’t have any dough sticking to your roller
How do you make sugar cookies hold their shape?
Here are some tips to help your sugar cookies keep their shape when baking…
- The dough should be cold when working with it
- Keep the thickness of your cookie 1/4 inch or less
- Bake the cookies on a Silpat sheet or parchment paper
- If the cookies are puffing up too much, cut back on the baking powder
- Make sure your oven is warmed to the correct temperature before baking. If the oven is too cold, the cookies will start spreading before they have a chance to set up
Finally, here is the recipe:
The Best Christmas Sugar Cookies
Nothing reminds me of my childhood Christmas like these Sugar Cookies!
Ingredients
- 1 cup of granulated sugar
- 1 cup of powdered sugar
- 1 cup of butter
- 1 cup of oil
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp. almond extract
- 4&1/2 cup of flour
- 1 tsp. of baking powder
Icing (per color)
- 1 cup of powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. almond extract
- 2 – 3 Tbsp. of water
- Gel food coloring
Instructions
- In a large bowl – Cream the first 4 ingredients
- Add the egg, vanilla, and almond – mix in
- In another large bowl, mix the flour & baking powder
- Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, and mix
- Chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour
- When you are ready, Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
- roll the dough out between two sheets of wax paper *my little trick to avoid sticky dough on the rolling pin!
- And…cut the shapes out
- Bake for 8-10 minutes
- Mix the icing by mixing the powdered sugar, almond extract, water, and food coloring together. *Add water gradually until the icing is the consistency you like
- When the cookies have cooled – decorate! 🙂
Notes
- *When the dough warms up – and it does pretty quickly – pop it back into the refrigerator to get cold. I like to take half of the dough out at a time…roll, and cut into shapes. That way the other half is cold and ready to go when your dough gets too warm to shape
- If you’ve added too much water to your icing recipe, don’t worry – add more powdered sugar until it’s as thick as you want it to be
