Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

From a professional baker in a Facebook group I'm in.  These were a big hit with Johnny.

• 1 lb of salted butter, softened

• 2 cups of white sugar

• 2 eggs

• Extract of your choosing (my standard for sales is vanilla almond ....1 tsp of almond and 1 tsp vanilla but for our family Christmas cutouts i use anise extract like my grandmother always did. Any extract will work)

• 6 cups ap flour (can be subbed cup for cup with either king arthur or Pillsbury gluten free ap flour just beware that the dough is much more fragile making it kinda a pita to work with)

Cream butter and sugar for 3 minutes, beat in eggs, beat in extract, add flour slowly mixing until it all comes together. Refrigerate to make it easier to work with (though in a pinch I don't and it works out fine ...add small amounts of flour if you need it immediately and can't work with it yet for looseness or stickiness ). Roll out, cut out, (at this point I freeze the cut shapes on the tray for 10 minutes to ensure perfect shape but you can absolutely skip that step) and bake at 350 for between 10 and 14 minutes (as soon as they start getting a small tinge of brown around the bottom edge they're done....the majority of the cookie should be pale).


Royal Icing:
Oh yes...you do 6 tbs of meringue powder to one regular size bag of powdered sugar and about 1 cup of lukewarm water -then beat using a hand or stand mixer for about 5 minutes on high. 

From there you can color it in batches and thin it with water or thicken with powdered sugar as desired