'Tis the Season to Be Festive!

Every year at this time, my family (as I sure yours as well) has many different types of traditions. The many traditions that my family has have evolved throughout the years, but this year our traditions are somewhat different. Usually, my mom will make a delicious foods like toffee, eggnog, and gingerbread; while my sister gets busy making batches of party mix (honestly, I don't know how it became a Christmas tradition, but now it is) since we tend to go through one a night. I'll be making baked goods, and my Dad generally supervises the tree, as well as helping us make sugar cookies.

Like I said, our traditions are a bit different this year. My parents started a giant kitchen re-build back in July...and well, we still don't have an oven, or a stove. I came home for Winter Break from school and it took me two days to figure out where the food was now being kept. So, this put a bit of a damper on our holiday cooking. But, we didn't let it stop us!

This Thanksgiving, we went to visit my sister's instead of having the whole dinner at our house (since you know, we didn't have an oven or a stove). Now, my sister hasn't been able to participate in holiday cookie making for awhile now since she is a responsible adult and has a job. Therefore, we decided to do the cookie making at her house during Thanksgiving this year.

Sugar cookies has always been my dad's thing to do with us, and we go all out. Sometimes we'll make the dough from scratch, but since my sister isn't known for her baking skills (we used to say that she could burn water), we bought pre-made sugar cookie dough.

We start out with the cookie dough, and it's best to have it at room temperature, so make sure to take it out of the refrigerator 1-2 hours before you plan to roll out the dough. Take about a quarter to half of the dough, and roll it out onto a floured board. The flour prevents the dough from sticking to the board and later, to the cookie sheets. Roll out the dough until it is about a quarter of an inch thick. Next, use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes. Again, my sister isn't Susie Homemaker, so she didn't have any cookie cutter, so we used milk glasses and shot glasses, and our own artistic prowess (of which we have none).

Or you can make fun stuff like my dad did

Then, we took the cookie cutouts, and placed them onto a cookie sheet. Next, you can either leave the cookies plain to be iced later, or put on sprinkles now for simple sprinkle cookies. Bake the cookies according to the directions on the packaging, generally at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes. I have found that you only need to cook them for about 7-8 minutes if you make them thinner like we have. 

Continue rolling out the dough onto the board until you have no dough left. Set aside the cookies onto cooling racks while you make icing.

Icing is actually pretty darn easy to make, so I'll give you the recipe here:
1 box powdered sugar
1/4 - 1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine the powdered sugar and the vanilla in a bowl, and add the milk one tablespoon at a time (I used a shot glass, and seemed to work well enough). Fully combine the tablespoon of milk each time before you add more. It is very easy to overdo the milk, as not much is needed to make the frosting. Once you reach a desired consistency, you can separate the frosting into separate containers so that you can dye them colors.



Once you have the frosting, go crazy with frosting your cookies and sprinkles!

Happy holidays to you and yours!