By Lilly
This is the recipe I use every year as a staple for pretty much every holiday cookie. They are the perfect butter cookie for Italian wedding cookies, frosted sugar cookies, spritzes…you name it. Every person who eats these asks whose recipe it is. I wish I could take credit (usually my recipes are my own) but they’re from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Tonight I baked up a batch with my son for his school…they don’t celebrate secular holidays, so we stayed neutral by making iced bears, squirrels and porcupines for his preschool class.
*My son cannot have milk so we substitute all dairy with hemp or almond milk and soy butter and the recipe works just as well!
THE PERFECT HOLIDAY COOKIES (makes 3 dozen)
Prep time: 5 mins; Total time: 1hr 15 plus cooling time
What you need:
2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
16 tbsp. unsalted butter (2 sticks softened cut into 1/2″ pieces)
2 tbsp. cream cheese
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
What you do:
1. Whisk the flour, sugar and salt together in a large bowl.
2. Beat the butter into the flour mixture, one piece at a time, using an electric mixer on med. low-speed, con’t to beat until the mix looks crumbly and slightly wet (1-2 mins.) Beat in cream cheese and vanilla until the dough just begins to form large clumps, about 30 seconds.
3. Knead the dough in the bowl by hand a few times until it forms a large cohesive mass. Turn the dough out onto a clean counter, divide into two 4″ disks. Wrap the disks tightly in saran wrap and refrigerate until they begin to firm up 20-30 mins.
4. Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Working with one disk of dough at a time, roll out the dough to a 1/8″ thickness between two sheets of parchment paper. Slide the rolled dough and parchment onto a baking sheet and refrigerate until firm. About 10 mins.
5. Working with one sheet of dough at a time, cut shapes using cookie cutters and lay on two parchment lined baking sheets, spaced about 1″ apart. (I differ here- I punch the shapes then put them back in the fridge for about 5 mins., then I pull the dough from around the shapes. Otherwise they don’t hold their form well.) Bake the cookies about 10 minutes rotating the sheet halfway through baking. While the first batch is in the oven, roll out and cut the shapes for the second batch.
6. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely, about 30 mins. When cooled, cookies can be glazed and decorated as desired.
GLAZE:
What you need:
3 tbsp. whole milk
1 tbsp. cream cheese softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
What you do:
Whisk the milk and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the sugar and beat until fully blended. Drizzle on cookies with spoon, add sprinkles etc and enjoy!
