Marys Sugar Cookies Recipe

How to make it

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• Put out your butter and allow it to soften.
• Sift in powdered sugar and cream together with butter.
• Add egg,vanilla, and almond extract; mix well.
• Sift in flour, baking soda, and cream tartar.
• Cover and chill for 2 to 3 hours or overnight.
• When ready to bake heat oven to 375 degrees.
• Divide dough in half. Roll each half 3/16 inch thick or however thick you want your cookies to be on a lightly floured board or counter; we use waxed paper.
• Cut into desired shapes. We use a Kansas cookie cutter to make flags for the fourth of July. We make stars for that holiday as well. We make Christmas shapes for Christmas. For Easter we have church, cross, and bunny shapes. You can make any shapes you want.
• Place on lightly greased baking sheet.
• Bake 7 to 8 minutes or until light brown on the edges.
• If you want to use egg yolk paint you must paint the cookies before baking. Make Egg yolk paint by separating the yolk from the egg white. Add prefered food coloring to egg yolk and stir. It takes one egg yolk per color. Paint cookies before baking. When I was growing up we used this method for decorating our Christmas cookies.
• For the Fourth of July we frost the cookies. Check out the photo above to get and idea of what we do to create these. To make the flags, use a rectangular shaped cutter ( we use our Kansas cookie cutter). Bake the cookies before frosting. Cover cookie rectangle with white frosting. Add a square of blue frosting to the upper left corner. Place any number of silver sugar balls in the blue frosting to represent the stars. Use red frosting to make the red strips on the white frosting. We usually get an assembly line going to make these. One person does the white base. One person does the blue square, one person does the stars, and one person does the stripes. We have found that the gel frosting does not work well for the strips as it does not firm up. For Easter we use white frosting and then colored pastel sugars. My Mom found this recipe in a Betty Crocker cook book she got for a wedding present. It became a family tradition to make these cookies for the Holidays! It is great fun for kids to help decorate these cookies and they make great gifts as well! Have Fun!