The kids and I got into the cookie-making spirit this year. I started right after Thanksgiving, making up the basic dough for our sugar cookies and Linzer squares. It’s the best dang sugar cookie dough I know. It’s made with almond paste. And to me, it just tastes like Christmas.
Since I love all my readers, I will share with you this dough recipe. It comes from my mom – Margot Babler – from a November 1980 Family Circle magazine article. And it’s been made yearly in the Babler/Dotzour households for the last 30 years.
Basic Sugar Cookie Dough
Ingredients
1 lb butter softened (4 sticks)
2 cup sugar
2 cans almond paste (8 oz each)
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
6 1/2-ish cup flour (sifted)
1 1/4 tsp salt
Directions
Beat the butter and sugar. Crumble in almond paste. Beat until very smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla. Mix in the flour and salt. Break into four balls. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate or freeze.
For cut out cookies: Refrigerate dough for at least one hour. Roll out, cut out, chilling intermittently if necessary. Two balls of dough make enough cut-outs for our family.
Bake for 10-12 minutes at 375 degrees (air bake cookie sheets work great). I look for one tip of a cookie on a corner of the sheet to get the tiniest bit golden before pulling them out. Cool (or freeze). Frost with a mix of whipping cream and powdered sugar with a dab of vanilla.
For Linzer Squares: Use a jelly roll pan. Grease the pan, put down wax paper, grease the wax paper. Take one ball of the dough and press into the pan. Spread about one cup of raspberry jam (with seeds) over the dough. Take another 1/4 of the dough and roll out. Make strips with a pastry wheel. Lay the strips down to create a lattice weave pattern (but you don’t actually have to weave them!). Bake at 375 for 12-15 minutes. Makes a great holiday treat for teachers!
I spread out my cookie-making by making the dough early and freezing it, then cutting out the cookies and freezing those, and then frosting the cookies a few weeks later.
We were happy to have one of Andrew’s best buddies from school join us.
Happy decorators!
Oops! I just noticed that last year I did a similar post about this recipe. I had pictures of the Linzer squares on that one. Oh well. The holidays come every year:)