If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that I make a lot of sugar cookies - for every season.    To the point now, where if I don’t, my nieces and nephews get mad at me, and they aren’t afraid to voice their frustration.  

It started with my niece’s first birthday. Then Christmas. Then more birthdays. They’ve now asked me to make it for every occasion possible – including Thanksgiving. (Did the pilgrims have sugar cookies?  …did they have a turkey??)

I do decorate the cookies in their choice of theme for their birthday using royal icing.  And quite frankly, I think they just love the cookies for the sugar rush. (we all need to get our fix somehow).

I have included my personal favorite recipe below but you could use a packaged mix. If you are using cookie cutters, you will need to  make the packaged dough a bit drier so that it holds its cutout shape when you bake it. You can add a bit more flour and reduce the amount of liquid that the recipe calls for.  For example, most recipes call for 3 cups of butter and I use at least half that. (I have to make up for the ton of sugar I use to decorate the cookies with so this is about as healthy as it's going to get!) 

Once the dough is made, I leave it to sit in the fridge for at least an hour. Chilling the dough helps when you roll out the dough and keep the shape of the cutters you are using.

Try to leave some space between each cookie when placing it on the cookie sheet as the cookies expand a bit when baking.  I can't tell you the number of times I took the cookies out of the oven only to see them morph together!

Once out of the oven, if the cookies are touching a bit, you can separate them using a butter knife as soon as they come out of the oven and are still soft.  Once the cookies have cooled, separating them may be more difficult.