Super-Easy Christmas Cookies

A lot of ready-made doughs (like some Pillsbury and Nestle brands) contain potential allergens. This recipe, based on my Grandma Mary’s classic Christmas cookies, is almost as easy as slice and bake dough—and yet it’s much, much tastier. These melt-in-your-mouth cookies are so easy and they taste like bakery butter cookies.
Ingredients
- 1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter
- ¾ cup sugar, scant
- Yolk of one egg
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (McCormick or Nielsen-Massey
brand)
- Red and green decorator's sugar (I use Cake Mate brand) or
white granulated sugar, for topping.
Directions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream butter and sugar with
electric mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add egg yolk
and beat until combined. Mix salt with flour and add gradually to
butter mixture. Add vanilla. Dough will be stiff.
- Roll into small balls, about one teaspoon and place on
non-stick cookie sheet. Flatten with fork in a cross-hatch pattern
and sprinkle with red and green decorator's sugar. Bake 7-9 minutes
or until bottoms are very lightly brown. Let cool on cookie sheet
and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Store in an
airtight container.
Decorator Sugar
By Nadine Zagar on Thursday, December 30, 2010
I see that you use Cake Mate brand decorator sugar. I had a super hard time this year trying to get allergen information on the decorator sugars. I eventually gave up and simply used food color to color my own white granulated sugar. Have you discoverded that Cake Mate decorator products are nut free?