Easy Shortbread Christmas Cookies

You can see it in their eyes, the question. ‘When are you going to make Christmas cookies?’. You can only stand it so long until you break down and decide which of the 12 or so different kinds you will make this season. Now I will admit I am no cookie expert, but what I do know is that my kids love them, and use words like ‘oh my god’, ‘ummmmm’, and ‘delicious’. These are always encouraging words to hear.

Lately, I broke. I couldn’t take the look anymore, and decided on something easy to make to keep them occupied until I was truly ready to bake. So, lets bring on the ever so easy and delicious shortbread Christmas cookie.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• colored sugar (optional, but fun)

That’s it.

To your processor, add the butter and sugar and mix to a nice cream. Slowly add in your flour. Now keep in mind when you bring this together, it doesn’t really form a dough like you have in mind. You have to, in my opinion, work it with your hands a bit. My hands are always warm, which is probably helpful in this recipe, as they warm the butter and bring the dough together.

Get your cookie cutters ready and preheat your oven to 300 degrees. I used Christmas trees and some sort of snowman shape.

Lightly flour your surface, and take the dough and mold into a nice ball. Slice it in half and work with one half at a time. Lightly flour a rolling pin, and roll the dough out to about a 1/4 inch thickness. Then dip your cutters in flour and get to work. Carefully remove the excess dough, and place the cutouts onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Take the excess dough and repeat the process. Sprinkle the colored sugar on top of the cookies.

Bake in a 300 degree oven for roughly 20-30 minutes (depending on oven) until light golden brown. Remove and place on a wired rack.

Continue this process with the second half of the dough. These shortbread cookies come out sweet and flaky and are a sure hit, plus it buys me some time until I get the next look, probably two days. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas.