I have tried lots of sugar cookie recipes, and I have to say the most recent one I tried is worth sharing. I made cookies for my daughter’s valentine party at school.  I wanted to make some really cute ones with royal icing but realized meringue powder has a peanut allergy warning label so that was out.  So I did some research on using buttercream icing.  It’s my fave.  I wanted to be able to pack the cookies into a tiny box and stacking them would have been ideal. Only problem is you can’t stack cookies decorated with buttercream. However, I slightly melted the buttercream and it did in fact dry a little harder than it might have.  Here’s what I did:

Cookies (makes a small batch of dough): I made 36 small cookies with one batch.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg, room temp
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

1. Whisk the baking powder and flour together in a bowl.
2. In your mixer, cream the butter until its light and fluffy…takes a few minutes.
3. Add sugar to the whipped butter and mix again.
4. Add in egg and vanilla then mix.
5. Slowly add in the flour mixture one cup at a time.
6. Gather up the dough into a ball and wrap in saran wrap.
7. Place the dough into the fridge for about 20 minutes.
8. Roll dough onto a lightly floured silpat or piece of parchment.  I place a piece of wax paper over the dough so it doesn’t stick to my rolling pin.  Roll the dough to 3/8″ for thick soft cookies and cut as desired.
9. Place cookie sheet of cut out cookies in fridge while oven preheats to 350.
10. Bake at 350 for 7-10 minutes.
11.  Decorate as desired.

Buttercream icing:

Ingredients:

• 1 stick of salted butter
• 3 cups of powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 Tablespoons heavy whipping cream, half and half, or milk

Directions:

1. Cream butter in your mixer until light and fluffy just as you did for the cookies.
2. Slowly add in powdered sugar, vanilla, and whipping cream.
3. Add food coloring if desired.
4. Put icing into a microwave safe bowl and slightly melt it for 30 seconds.
5. Pour the icing into an icinig bag or bottle. I use a cheap condiment bottle from walmart.
6. I just squeezed the icing onto the cookies and let them dry.