12 Days of Cookies - Day 11 - Christmas Cutouts

Okay, the end is in sight.  I've actually baked both cookies 11 and 12, now it's just a matter of getting the writing done.  Funny how even though I said that I'm not very fond of roll and cut cookies, I seem to have selected an awful lot of them to make for this project.  =)  I planned from the very beginning to make this one, and I thought I was going to save it for last, making a nice circle with my opening spiced cutouts.  But I changed my mind.  Instead, I bring you these vanilla sugar cookies for Day 11.

These turned out to be great for what I needed them for.  Quite a while back, I agreed to help out with the holiday party for Brianna's first grade class.  I planned to bake cookies, like I did last year.  And I did bake cookies for eating--I made another batch of the chocolate candy cane cookies.  But as we were planning a couple weeks ago, I got an email from the party organizer asking if I could bake cookies for decorating.  We decided simple rounds would be best, since we were supposed to avoid reference to any particular holidays.

I mixed up the dough Tuesday night and baked the cookies Wednesday night.  (The party was on Thursday.)  The dough was very straightforward to make--the usual mix of butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, an egg and some vanilla.  The only unusual ingredient was a bit of sour cream.  I didn't bother dividing up the dough; I just flattened it out and wrapped up the whole thing in plastic wrap.  When it was time to roll, I cut the dough in half with my bench scraper and worked with one piece at a time.  I totally missed the part in the instructions about using sugar on the counter when rolling out the dough.  I just used flour.  The dough was a bit hard to roll out--I had to let it warm up quite a bit before rolling.  And even then, it had a tendency to want to break when I was rolling.  But I got my circles cut out, put them on parchment lined baking sheets, and chilled them on the pans for 10-15 minutes before baking.  I baked them for close to 15 minutes before they started to get any color around the edges.

The verdict?  I don't know that I'll make these again.  They worked fine for decorating, and baked up flat and even.  But they didn't have a whole lot of flavor.  Maybe using sugar for rolling them out would have helped, but I'm not so sure about that.  I have other vanilla sugar cookie recipes that I like more.  But I don't think the kids really cared that much about that.  They were having too much fun with the sprinkles...

decorated by one of the kids in B's class--I don't know, you can still see the cookies... =)

If you'd like to give these a try, you can find the recipe here.  And be sure to check out the other bakers participating in the 12 Days of Cookies to see what they've baked up recently!  =)

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes

(honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Kelly of Sass & Veracity

Michelle of Big Black Dog

RJ of Flamingo Musings

Sandy of At the Baker's Bench

Tiffany of The Nesting Project