What Everybody Ought to Know About Baking Sugar Cookies

Here they are! All 67ish sugar cookies or however many made it to the end of the decorating stage.

I learn more and more and become less and less frustrated each time I bake sugar cookies.

There is no instant gratification. Baking and decorating sugar cookies, or any cookies for that matter, requires a lot of waiting and a lot of patience. Wouldn’t we all love to have our ingredients portioned out into their own bowls ahead of time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could dump all the ingredients, not forgetting the cream of tartar, into the mixer and have no issues with the dough sticking to the counter or transferring the cutouts to the cookie sheet?

If I could recommend one thing when it comes to baking and decorating sugar cookies, or any cookies, it would be to have patience. Do not bake sugar cookies a couple of hours before you are supposed to be having Thanksgiving Dinner at your family’s house. Oh wait I did that, and was pulling my hair out and hyperventilating.

I started these cookies on Monday and finally finished them two days later. Another warning, if you plan to spread the cookie baking and decorating process over the course several days do not snack on them as you go. Oh wait I did that one too, but it was all for the purpose of saving me time during the decorating stage.

So here is how I spent the past three days:

Monday afternoon I prepared the dough. I let the dough chill for about three hours in the refrigerator. This is important! Believe me, I already learned my lesson when I attempted to speed things up by using the freezer…the butter was not a fan of the freezer and decided not to cooperate.

Three hours later I preheated the oven, rolled out the dough, cut the shapes, and baked. I also made turkey soup using frozen stock from Thanksgiving but that is not relevant.

Tuesday I “lined and spilled” the green onto the cooled cookies during nap time.

Today I attempted to decorate the cookies. I guess they came out alright, you just have to blur your eyes a little.

Now all I have to do is get some of them off my hands. I made some of them for a family from our church. They are the reason we have a Christmas tree this year.

Now one last thing. Can anyone tell me what is going on in this photograph? There are three things, in case you were wondering.