Handmade Holidays: Christmas Sugar Cookies

I'm writing this with a little tear in my eye. It's our final installment of Handmade Holidays 2013! If you've stuck with us the whole time, give yourself a pat on the back. Hopefully this series inspired you to do a little less of your shopping at the mall, and more time supporting independent businesses. And hey--you also have some great new recipes to take for a test drive! My friend Ayla is here today with a rundown of how to make some tasty sugar cookies. (With extra sugar on top.) Let's see how she does it:

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I'm Ayla from Eyelah blog and I'm sharing one of my favorite things to make around the holidays. Sugar cookies are quick and easy and they are very tasty! Plus they last pretty long too. So today I'm going to share a simple sugar cookie recipe.

You can google sugar recipe and come up with a bunch so I actually used a recipe by Alton Brown but I modified it a bit. 

Ingredients: 

3 cups of all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegan Earth Balance butter( you can use regular butter too)
1 cup of sugar
2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
Powdered sugar, for rolling out for dough

Preheat Oven to  375F(190C) mix the flour, baking soda, salt together in a bowl and set aside. Then you want to mix the butter with the sugar until it's as creamy as it's going to get with no liquid. Then add the vanilla, milk, and egg and mix until super creamy. 

Next you want to add the flour but you want to add it slowly. I used my mixer while adding the flour until I couldn't anymore. If you have a stand mixer then your good but if it's a hand mixer it will definitely let you know when it can mix the dough anymore. 

Once all of the flour is used and mixed up you want to put it on the counter or table and roll it into a ball. You first want to through some powdered sugar on the table first so it doesn't stick to the table. 

The Alton Brown recipe suggest you put this in the fridge for 2hrs before rolling out. But, I ain't got time for that.. so I just took half of the ball and rolled it out for the cookies. You can either take a tablespoon of dough and make basic cookies or you can use cookie cutters. 

Don't they look so pretty??

You want to grease a cookie sheet and gently move the cookies to the sheet. I used a thin spatula to help move them over. Since I didn't chill the dough the dough is a bit delicate. But, if you mess up you can always roll out the dough again! 

So you can leave the cookies as they are or add sugar crystals or icing. I had some sugar crystals so I gently added them over cookies. If you add sugar crystals you definitely want to add them first otherwise they won't stick if you do them after they have baked. 

Then you should bake them for about 8-9 minutes or until the cookie looks golden around the edges. Once they are done, take them out, and let them cool. 

Delicious! What's your favorite kind of cookie to make for the holidays?