Sugar Cookies and Frosting - Lower Fat
Notes:
Pam Anderson uses 2 sticks of butter and no baking powder, Martha Stewart uses 1 stick butter and a little baking powder. Better Homes and Gardens advises against substituting cooking oil for margarine. This version attempts a compromise by using butter instead of "acceptable margarine" recommended by the American Heart Association Cookbook recipe. (Acceptable means it should list liquid vegetable oil, e.g., corn oil, as the first ingredient and should contain no more than 2 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon.)
Most recipes recommend chilling the dough-- if necessary for 3 hours. For variety, blend in some dried cherries, chocolate chips, lemon or lime zest, toasted nuts, then roll cookie in some nuts. Or, add 1/4 teaspoon each cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Pam Anderson, in a USA Weekend recipe, offered some interesting combinations using herbs: cardamom rolled in toasted slivered almonds; ginger (ground and crystallized) rolled in sesame seeds; currants and rosemary rolled in toasted pine nuts.
See Cookies for more recipes.
1/2 cp butter
1 cp sugar
1 t baking powder
1 egg
1 t vanilla
2 cp flour
1. Soften butter at room temperature, then beat at medium speed. Add sugar, baking
powder, and a dash of salt, beating till well blended.
2. Beat in egg and vanilla. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer, then
stir in remaining flour.
3. Chill dough.
4. Divide dough in half and roll out to 1/8" thickness. Using a cookie cutter, cut
into desired shapes, dipping cutter's edge into flour to prevent sticking.
5. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375( for 7-8 mi8nutes or till edges are
firm and bottoms are very lightly browned.
6. Cool on rack and frost with icing below.
Powdered Sugar Icing
Note: My daughter picked this icing because it does not require cooking and uses no eggs, butter, or shortening. Great for decorating holiday cookies. A tip from Cooking Light Magazine for decorating cookies: Spoon icing into a zip-top plastic bag, cut a tiny hole in one corner of bag, and pipe designs on cookies.
1 cp sifted powdered sugar
1/4 t vanilla
1 T fresh squeezed lemon juice
food coloring if necessary
Combine all ingredients and blend we.. till it reaches drizzling consistency. Add more
liquid if necessary.