Soft Christmas Sugar Cookies: A quick and easy recipe

Christmas Sugar Cookies

This recipe is for the best sugar cookie I have ever tasted. This recipe takes about 10 minutes to whip together, and another 22 minutes to bake (11 minutes per sheet). From start to finish you looking at a total of 40 minutes, and you will receive about 2 dozen fantastic cookies for your effort. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup course sugar (white, green and red)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
14 tablespoons of butter, softened
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Making and Baking the Sugar Cookies:

First preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in one mixing bowl.
In the other mixing bowl, beat the remaining sugar and the butter together for 5 minutes (this is important!).
Beat the vanilla and the eggs into the sugar and butter until combined.
Slowly mix in the flour.
Roll the dough into golf sized balls.
Place the course sugar in a shallow dish. I find that mixing 1 part colored sugar with 2 parts white has the most even and pleasing look. I usually make a combination of all white, green/white, and red/white, so I use a lot more of the white course sugar than the colored sugar.
Place the balls on a cookie sheet that has been either greased or lined with wax paper, at least 2 inches apart.
Press the palm of your hand onto the cookies to flatten them a little.
Bake them for about 11 minutes, one sheet at a time.
When the edges start to brown they are done.
Let them sit for a few minutes on a cooling rack before serving.

These will stay soft for about 7 days if stored in a plastic zipper bag. We usually eat them much more quickly though! They are fairly sturdy as well, so if you are making cookies to mail out, these are a good choice.