recipe: best sugar cookies with cream cheese frosting ever

Guys, I'm not kidding when I say these are the best Christmas cookies ever. This is one of my grandma's recipes passed onto my mother and we make them every year before Christmas. However, you could make these for any occasion AND you could change up the frosting. Don't mess with the cookie recipe though. The thing about this recipe that is so great, is that they are not too sweet, but just sweet enough. If you have a major sweet tooth, you may not care about that but trust me, when you are working with frosting, it's an important thing to consider.

A few of things before you get started:
- When we make these, we use the whole countertop. I recommend making these where you have enough room to spread out.
- Don't skip the sifting. It's very important to the fluffiness of these cookies.
- Keep the dough chilled until you are ready to use it. Cookie cutters and warm dough are NOT friends.

Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
1 Cup Shortening
1 1/4 Cup Sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. Vanilla
3 1/2 Cups Flour
1 tsp. Baking Soda
2 tsp. Cream of Tartar
1 tsp. Salt

Directions:
1. Cream shortening and sugar.
2. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
3. Sift flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt.
4. Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients until mixed well.
5. Split the dough in two and cover. Chill dough in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
6. Pre-heat over to 375 degrees and grease a couple of cookie sheets.
7. Coat your surface with flour and roll out half of the dough to about 1/4-1/3 inch thick.
8. Use cookie cutters to make your cookie shapes and place them on your cookie sheets.
9. Bake cookies for 7-9 minutes.
10. Cool on rack and frost and decorate as you wish!

Original Frosting Recipe
1 Tbsp. Melted Butter
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 Cup Powdered Sugar
1 tsp. Milk

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 Cup Butter
1 Cup Cream Cheese
2 Cups Powdered Sugar, add more to taste
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions: Beat ingredients together until fluffy. Mix with food coloring for colored frosting.

We used cake icing bags for our frosting, but you could just use a knife to frost the cookies. We go back and forth with these two frostings- the original one hardens so you can stack the cookies, the cream cheese frosting cannot be stacked very well, but they are delicious! Anyway, hope you enjoy this recipe and Merry Christmas (Eve)!

xo, Savannah

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