I started putting this cookie post together last week.  I foolishly thought it would go live Tuesday or Wednesday this week, a perfect little pop of pink and sweetness for the Valentine’s holiday.  I suppose sometimes I forget that I’m a wife, a mom, a busy floral designer in the height of her booking season, a preschool room mom… and sometimes I even want a minute to myself in the day.

Working from home blesses me with a flexible schedule.  I can make cookies in the middle of the day and grocery shop when the 9-5ers are at work.  But it also takes an extra dose of organization.  It’s easy to get focused on one task and forget the rest of it.  It’s easy to get so busy in playing housewife that I forget my client proposals – or even worse, when I focus too much on my clients and forget my duties at home.

That balance topic is a rising again, it’s a constant struggle.  But I really don’t want to talk about that today.  What I do want to think about is cookies.  Really really yummy sugar cookies.  I’ve been making these with my aunt practically since I was born.  They’re so good filled with just the right amount of doughy, chewiness.

Fun fact, my husband is a trained chef.  He just recently left his head chef position for another food related job, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t still love good food.  In fact, that’s one of the biggest complaints that we have about living in our area, the lack of quality dining establishments.  The reason I bring this up is because even though he’s a trained chef who has worked in numerous high end restaurants – I do most of the cooking at home.  It keeps it a little healthier (except when I’m making treats like these sugar cookies!) and that’s one of our ways to keep balance.  However, with his extensive food background and my every growing cooking experiences, I’ve rarely shared any of it in this space.  I’m not sure recipe development is my thing and he rarely writes anything down.  Our girls though, are being raised with a very refined pallet, learning to love things like Brussel sprouts!

Back to the cookies, I always remember baking with my aunt.  She had an old plastic tablecloth that she would pull out just for us to roll out cookie dough on along with countless of cookie cutters.  She’d let us eat as much dough as we wanted and once the cookies were baked, we always ate the first one without frosting.   Frosting the cookies however, always took FOREVER!  I remember thinking that the pile of cookies would never end.  She always used cream cheese frosting which is delicious with these, but I’ve been opting to top them with royal icing lately, just because I prefer a smoother finish.  Either way, this recipe does not disappoint.

A couple of recipe notes – the actual recipe is typed, by a typewriter on a notecard that looks almost identical to this.  The only thing missing is a little butter and flour on the index card.  Secondly, I use butter even though the orginal recipe calls for shortening.  The butter makes them slighty more dense, the shortening makes them slightly more airy.  To make the substitution, use the same amount of unsalted butter.  I’ve also used half butter and half shortening with yummy results.   This recipe is old, in my current oven, I only have to cook each batch for 5-6 minutes, depending upon how thick I roll out my cookies.  And like I said, lately I’ve been using royal icing (this recipe) or cream cheese frosting is really yummy too, it just doesn’t harden as well for stacking/storage and decorating.  Clearly I’m not a pro decorator but as long as they taste good, no one complains!

Enjoy!!

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