Old Fashioned Decorated Christmas Sugar Cookies

From 1972 (age 9) my sister Dawn and myself working hard on some gingerbread men and Christmas cookies while our Daddy and brother Paul were outside shoveling snow. Baby Nikki would have been in the crib. That would be me rocking those orange fuzzy slippers and doubling up on the aprons! Love it! Remember it like it was yesterday!

Christmas will be here before you know it. It's time to start planning ahead for a plate-full of cookies for everyone's jolliest visitor on December 24th! I have so many fond memories of baking Christmas cookies with my Mother and sister and later for my kids' Christmas parties. I would work so hard to make the icing so pretty and it always broke my heart to see the little ones take that one bite and then toss them to side for a sampling of the abundance of goodies in front of them. I wouldn't trade that labor of love for anything!



INGREDIENTS:

½ cup margarine

1 cup sugar

½ tsp. vanilla

1 egg

2 cups sifted flour

1 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

Cream butter. Add sugar, vanilla and eggs. Beat. Add dry ingredients. Chill dough (overnight). Roll dough. Cut with cookie cutter.

Bake at 325 degrees for 8 minutes.

ICING:

1 lb. box powdered sugar, sifted

1/3 cup margarine, melted

5 T. milk

1 tsp. vanilla

Food coloring, optional, but why wouldn't you?

Divide icing into several small bowls for each color you'd like to create. I like to use my little ramekins for this project. With Christmas cookies, you've got to have white (for angels), red (for candy canes and Santa), yellow (for stars and bells), green (Christmas trees) and blue (one of the ornament colors).

Let the icing harden before you try to place these into a container. I recommend placing wax paper in between your layers.