A Handful of Everything: 8th Day of Bloggy Christmas

On the 8th Day of Bloggy Christmas Miss Krista from A Handful of Everything gave to me,

Grandma Sue's Famous Sugar Cookies!

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Good morning! It's Krista again from A Handful of Everything. Today I am sharing with you one of my family's absolute favorite recipes. This is yet another fabulous recipe given to me by my Mother-in-law Sue. My kids love these cookies and we make them several times a year but they are a tradition to make every Christmas.

These soft and fluffy old fashioned cookies are so good you can't just eat one. These are great sprinkled with colored sugars or my favorite homemade buttercream frosting! Regardless what you put on top of these they are sure to please.

Ingredients:

4 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup milk

In a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

With a pastry blender, cut in the butter and shortening as you would for pie crust until the mixture is a coarse meal. The temperature of the butter when you make these cookies is really important. If you use cold butter your cookies will taste like pie dough, really flat and flaky. You want light and fluffy. Don't use melted butter, you want nice soft room temperature butter and shortening.

In a separate bowl (Kitchen Aid) mix the sugar, vanilla, baking soda, eggs, and milk. Mix until combined well.

Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture in three batches a little at a time on low speed, mixing just until combined and all the flour is incorporated into the dough.

Chill the dough for an hour.

Roll out to 1/8-1/4" inch thickness. It's better to air on the side of too thick than too thin and just bake a little longer. Cut with favorite cookie cutters. Arrange 2" apart on a baking sheet.

Bake at 375 F for 7-10 minutes or until the tops are evenly puffed and the bottoms are just bearly starting to brown. Allow to cool for 1-2 minutes on the pan, then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling completely.