Soft Christmas Cookies

I'm copying this post over from my old blog. Sorry if you've already read it, but I wanted to have it all in one place. And, let's face it, I love these cookies! They're worth two posts! :)

I am super picky about my Christmas sugar cookies. I don’t like really crispy, crunchy cookies and I don’t like for them to taste like you used a lot of flour when rolling them out. Told you I was picky! I found this recipe last year on allrecipes.com and love it! The cookies are soft, but not so fragile they fall apart when you pick them up and they have a nice buttery taste. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour (plus a little extra on the side for rolling)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup margarine, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together then set aside. In a large bowl, cream together margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Gradually blend in the sifted ingredients until fully absorbed.  Cover dough and chill for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or line sheets with parchment paper (works great!). On a clean, floured surface, roll out small portions of chilled dough to 1/3 inch thickness. You will need to work some flour into the dough, but don’t over do it. Just keep your rolling pin and your surface lightly floured and gently roll out. I only ran my rolling pin over the dough a couple times. Cut out shapes using floured cookie cutters.

Bake 6-8 minutes in preheated oven until middle of cookie is set and no longer wet/shiny looking. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

I used Bridget at Bakeat350′s icing recipe to decorate with. Check out all her awesome cookies!

I linked up to The Larson Lingo's Cookie Exchange last year. Love her blog! Will post another recipe for her cookie exchange tomorrow! :)