Call me the Grinch Who Stole Easter. No foil-wrapped chocolate eggs or bunnies. No cream-filled eggs, peanut butter-filled eggs, speckled malted milk eggs or Peeps are hiding out in baskets and candy dishes at our house. There's not a single jelly bean to be found, either, though I did manage to scarf a few of the black ones at my mother's house the other day. Today, we'll have our Easter sugar in the form of Martha's outstanding lemon cookies and my Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake, and a take-home treat for brunch guests to munch on later.
The treat, sugar-cookie cut-outs, are my signature cookie. I make them year-round -- Easter chicks, bunnies and eggs, Christmas trees, Santas and mittens, Halloween ghosts and pumpkins, Valentine hearts and flowers. The occasions and possibilities are endless. I never get tired of making them and eating them, and my "peeps'' don't seem to, either. Or they just don't have the heart to tell me.
Now that I've posted about them several times, I thought I'd share the recipe with you. They're light, thin, crisp and very faintly spiced with ... Sorry, I can't tell you what they're spiced with. That's a trade secret. Use a quarter-teaspoon of your favorite baking spice. Or try a blend, like apple pie or pumpkin pie spice, and experiment until you come up with something you like. In my next post, I'll tell you about the Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with an optional secret ingredient. All-Season, All-Occasion Sugar Cookie Cut-Outs 1 3/4 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking spice or spices of your choosing 1/2 cup butter, softened 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 egg Sugars for decorating (see note) In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and spice(s) to blend thoroughly. Set aside. In a mixer bowl, combine butter and sugar; beat until light and fluffy. Blend in vanilla. Add egg and beat again until fluffy. Gradually add flour mixture, beating until just combined. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm (at least 2 hours, or overnight). Heat oven to 325 degrees. Work with half of dough at a time and keep half in fridge. Roll out dough to a thickness of about 1/8 inch on a lightly floured board or pastry cloth. Cut with cookie cutters to make a variety of shapes. Transfer to lightly greased baking sheets and decorate with sugars as desired. Bake until cookies are golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes. Let stand for a couple of minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool. Makes about 3 dozen cookies. Note: Recipe is easily doubled. The dough freezes well (double wrapped) as do the finished cookies. Decorating gels, sold in tubes, also work well with these cookies.
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