Loretta Kelley's Sugar Cookies

from Loretta Kelley

For cookie dough:

In an electric mixer, blend 1 1/2 cups margarine or butter with 2 cups regular sugar, 4 eggs, and 2 tablespoons vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix 5 cups flour, 2 teaspoon salt, and 2 teaspoon baking powder. Gradually add the flour mixture to the sugar-egg mixture in the electric mixer. Chill the resulting dough for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Roll dough out about 1/3 inch thick on a floured board. Cut into shapes, flouring cookie cutter anew with each cut.

Bake cookies on air cookie sheets for 6 - 8 minutes (do not over-bake; cookies should be soft inside).

Cool cookies on rack with paper underneath to catch frosting.

For frosting (two frostings):

First frosting is just powdered sugar thinned with a few drops of milk, beaten with a spoon.

When cookies are completely cool, apply first frosting; frosting should thick enough so that you can't see the cookies through it but not so thick that it doesn't run over the side. After it is applied let cookies thoroughly dry. If sprinkles are wanted they must be applied when this frosting is still wet or they won't stick.

Second frosting is about 2 pounds powdered sugar plus 2 hunks of crisco (2 spatula's worth; approx. 1/2 cup) beaten in electric mixer bowl with a little vanilla; add a little milk to it by drops until texture is really thick ribbon-like (beater will be full of icing when lifted up).

Fill pastry sleeve (closed tip with mini holes) and outline trees, bells, &c with squiggles and crossbars; candy canes are lined diagonally. Leaf tip can be used too. For coloring, use the paste-type.

Get Wilton's basic book for how to make the various decorations.

Kelley Hoffman's Notes: This is a really EXCELLENT dough to work with - it rolls out without much fuss…and after you’ve done the first roll, the scraps are easy to combine and re-roll. As long as you handle the dough gently and don’t work the dough too much, the cookies from the second and third roll come out tender!

My kitchen-aid bowl is not big enough to make the full recipe in one go, so I generally cut the recipe in half and make the dough in two batches. The dough may seem a little sticky and wet when it is finished– that is just what you want! Once refrigerated, it will be very easy to rollout!

My tip for perfectly shaped cookies when using a cookie cutter is to roll the dough out directly onto a piece of parchment paper that is roughly the size of your baking sheet, cut the cookies, and then peel away the excess dough on the outside of the shape. I usually make the parchment a little long on one end, so I can hold the sheet between my stomach and the counter edge while I'm rolling. Because you don't have to handle the "shapes" once they're formed, all your cookies will be uniform!

I’ve tried baking these cookies at a couple different temperatures. If you’re in a hurry, you can bake the cookies at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes…but they brown really quickly, so make sure you keep a close eye on the cookies (so they don’t burn). Since I am always multi-tasking, I prefer a slightly lower temperature, so I have a little more flexibility (meaning the cookies don’t brown as fast, so if I’m not there right when the buzzer goes off, the cookies aren’t burned). I generally prefer to bake these cookies at 375 for 12-15 minutes (for large cookies). Smaller cookies may need less time.

This recipe makes about 40 large cookies using a 6 inch-tall cookie cutter. You could probably get more out of the dough by using smaller cookie cutters.

This is a double frosted cookie. For the first frosting, use about ½ of a 1 pound box of powered sugar and 3-4 TBS of milk. If using gel food coloring, usually the tip of a small spoon with coloring is enough to give the first frosting a bright color. I generally lay the cookies out on wax paper on the counter and “paint” the frosting on with a pastry brush.

For the second frosting, which is piped out using a pastry bag, I use a 2 pound bag of powdered sugar and 12 TBS of milk. This amount of frosting should be enough to generously decorate 40 large cookies. I generally subdivide the frosting into 2-3 bowls and make a few different colors of frosting.

These cookies keep well in the freezer. This is especially great for a party or the holidays – as you can bake and decorate them ahead of time (I’ve had no problems baking them up to a month in advance). As a general rule of thumb, you can keep most bread, cookies, and cakes in the freezer without any deterioration up to 6 months if tightly wrapped. Before freezing, if I’ve frosted the cookies, I usually let them dry for several hours on the counter, so I won’t crush the frosting when I stack them in a freezable container.