Grandma Verna's Sugar Cookies

A very special cookie recipe in out house, this recipe is from my husband's cousin's grandmother.  Grandma Verna is no longer with us but if she were, she's be well over 100 years old.  So I don't know where she got this recipe but you can bet it's probably been handed down through the generations.

But enough about that...here's the recipe:

Grandma Verna's Sugar Cookies
What you need:

1 cup sweet butter

1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, well beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

What you do:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Thoroughly blend butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.
Add the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.  Mix well.

Cover and chill the dough 30 minutes or until ready to bake.  Divide the cookie dough in half.  Keep one half chilled while you roll the other.

On a floured surface, roll to about 1/8 inch thickness.  Cut with cookie cutters of your choice.  Place on ungreased baking sheet and bake until just starting to turn golden about 8 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack, then frost and decorate however you like!  I generally coat each cookie with a thin layer of decorator's icing and sprinkle with colored sugar or other decorative sprinkles.

Blogger Mom On Time Out has a great post on how to make colored sugar.  It's easy to do and her photos are so pretty they could be art prints!

Tip: Keep flour in old spice shaker and use for dusting cookie cutting board

Decorator's Icing

Mix 2 cups confectioner's sugar with 1 tablespoon of water and add a teaspoon at a time until you have a thin spreading consistency.

Sugar Cookie Dough in a Roll

Slice & Bake Sugar Cookies

One nice thing about this recipe is that if you don't have the time or don't want to spend forever cutting out all the shapes (but isn't that the most fun?), you can roll the dough into cylinders, wrap them in waxed paper or plastic wrap and store them in the refrigerator or freezer.  When you want to bake a batch, simply slice them into rounds, place on a baking sheet, bake, ice and decorate!