Christmas Sugar Cookies

Merry Christmas!!

I hope you have all had a lovely day with your family and loved ones! I certainly have - feeling very stuffed and content today.

I have a few posts that I wanted to do before Christmas but have just been too busy to get to the computer! I finally got a minute today, of all days. Everyone is snuggled up on the sofa watching Downton Abbey and snoozing so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to at least get one post out.

Every year my mum and I make Christmas cookies in honour of my Grandma. She had a great sugar cookie recipe but unfortunately it was lost after she died. We have searched high and low for a recipe that is exactly the same but, alas, we have not found a perfect one.

The perfect ones are light with a delicate sugary taste, chewy and do not bleed from the cut out shape. We used this recipe this time. They are very nice and light with the sugary taste, although not as chewy as I would have liked but still very good. My bakers recommendations:

1) Try not to roll them too thin as they won't be chewy enough. Best to roll them to 8mm thickness.
2) The shapes do bleed slightly so I recommend you don't use cutters that are too intricate.
3) I always find the longer you chill the dough to better so try to chill it over night.

Sorry for the poor quality photos, I forgot my camera so had to use my phone and the lighting wasn't very good.

We had a selection of sprinkles and water icing and put our creative hats on! Here is a selection of the ones we made in a festive scene!

They were all gobbled up over the Christmas weekend. They are light, soft and incredible more-ish. The icing makes them extra indulgent - water icing is so melt in your mouth! As you can see the icing isn't super neat because, I have to admit, I am not that patient so I can never be bothered to outline the cookie design with icing and then flood it with icing to get the prefect shape. If you make the icing thick enough and wiggle your spoon/knife/utensil around, you can usually get the right shape. Maybe not perfect but still scrummy!

I am going skiing with the boy tomorrow (super excited) and will be back on new years eve, so happy holiday season and happy baking!