I might be biased, but I'm pretty smitten with these cute sugar cookies. One of our Christmas traditions is to bake cookies and this year's cookies turned out perfectly. That never happens, I usually burn at least one batch, ha! We made this chocolate crackle recipe and a double batch of these sugar cookies. I'll be honest, decorating 60 sugar cookies took a good few hours but it was well worth it. It's a treat to be able to share these sweet edibles with classmates, friends, co-workers, and Jerry the crossing guard.

[Affiliate links have been used in this post for convenience]

Even when it comes to cookies, I can't quite seem to resist houses. I pulled out the barn, the house, and the tree cookie cutters from my stash. For the decorations, we used some Royal Icing mix from Bulk Barn, food colouring in Juniper Green, Teal and Christmas Red, and some of these cute gingerbread house door and window decor.

Ingredients: (Makes about 30 cookies)

Instructions:

1. In a stand mixer with the flat beater attachment, mix the sugar, butter, salt, egg, cream cheese, mascarpone and vanilla together until blended
2. Mix in the flour. Separate the dough into two batches. Wrap in wax paper and chill for at least two hours 
3. Roll the dough with a rolling pin (use lots of flour on the rolling pin as the dough is very sticky!). Cut shapes with cookie cutters
4. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Bake cookies for 11 minutes at 350 degrees F.
5. Let the cookies cool. Decorate with royal icing.

The decorating is my favourite part. It's fun to take "real world" elements, like garland around the door, snow on the tree branches, and the wreath on the barn, and render them in icing form.

If you've got more baking planned, I hope you'll try these cookies and let me know how they turned out!

And if you're in the mood for more holiday recipes, check out these past posts:
A Festive Dulce De Leche Latte
The One Minute Dessert for Coffee Lovers
Homemade Tea Jelly