From the time I was young, my favorite Christmas baked good was my Grandma’s cutout cookies. When I received a book of recipes for my Bridal Shower I was pleased to see I received this recipe from my Grandma!
Fast forward 10 years and I now have a little one with a birthday just before Christmas. He is very into Spiderman and is sure he has to take Spiderman Cookies into school for his Birthday party. I am not a decorator, but I can bake, so I enlisted the help of my husband who is way more crafty than myself to do the decorating, and I did the baking.
These cookies were a multi-night process with everything else we had going on the last couple of weeks, and I doubled the batch and did my Christmas cookies at the same time!
These cookies were made the same night I was also making the broccoli cheese soup in the instant pot, so my house smelled delicious!
Starting out I combine the granulated sugar, softened butter, eggs, and vanilla into a cream mixture. I then add in the flour, cream of tarter, and baking soda to make the dough. And just as with the other recipes I have posted I do not premix my dry ingredients! I used a mixer to mix mine and find it is much easier to use a stand mixer for this dough since it is a heavier dough, but I did use a hand mixer for several years prior to purchasing a stand mixer.
After the dough is mixed I removed it from the mixer and placed it on saran wrap. I shape the dough in a ball and wrap it up tightly to place it in the fridge for at least an hour and up to 48 hours.
Prior to starting to roll your dough, preheat your oven to 350°.
The next day I started rolling out my dough. I cut the dough into 6 pieces. I started with rolling each piece into a smaller ball. I use a baking sheet to roll dough on, sprinkling it with flour and using my rolling pin to roll the dough until it is approx 1/4″ thick. I then cut out the cookies with either cookie cutters or a cup or mason jar if you want round cookies.
Place your cut out cookies on your baking sheet or stone and place in the preheated oven to cook for 8-10 minutes, edges of the cookies should be slightly brown, but cookies should not be golden brown, only a light brown.
Let sit on the baking sheet or stone to cook for 4-5 minutes prior to moving to a cooling rack. Let fully cool prior to frosting or decorating.
To make the frosting mix up your softened butter and vanilla, add in your powdered sugar and then add milk until desired consistency. If you are doing decorating separate frosting into different bowls to add food coloring.
Since the frosting has milk in it I keep these cookies either in the fridge or freezer, I find they keep well this way and also do not go stale nearly as quick.
Ingredients
COOKIES
1 Cup Granulated White Sugar
1 Cup Softened Butter
3 Eggs
4 Cups Flour
2 Teaspoons Cream of Tarter
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
FROSTING
4 Cups Powdered Sugar
1/2 Cup Butter Softened
2-4 Tablespoons Milk
2 Teaspoons Vanilla
