The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Notes:
This recipe is excellent for its purpose of rolling and cutting cookies, it also makes GREAT cookie bouquets... I add an additional cup of sugar and tsp of vanilla and my family liked them a LOT better...it doesn’t seem to affect the way they cooked either.

If the heat and humidity is high – you can add between 1/4 - 1/2 cup more flour to all my cookie recipes

The dough, as you're rolling out does tend to be sticky ....simply keep dusting it with powdered sugar and you can continue to work with it...while adding additional flavor... Thanks!

This recipe is WONDERFUL. Make sure you: chill at least 1 hour to firm up the dough. Knead the dough before rolling out with pin. Use SUGAR instead of flour when rolling. There are many options with these cookies. They are great iced. If you like a chewier cookie, roll thicker, crunchier, roll thinner etc.

And WATCH these CLOSELY, and remove from oven when edges just begin to brown. If you leave them in too long, get them off the cookie sheet FAST- they will cool faster. Lastly, use parchment paper to line cookie sheets for easy removal.

Rolled them out on parchment paper then pulled away the scraps from around the cutout cookies. It eliminated damaging the cookies while transferring them to a cookie sheet. I have also used 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

The second time I made these I used 3 cups of sugar (instead of the recommended 2) and 2 tsps of vanilla (instead of 1) and this made a HUGE difference with the taste!!

Delicious! I tried this method I learned from a different sugar cookie recipe. You make little balls with the dough, then dip a glass into sugar and flatten cookie with the bottom of the sugared glass. Keeps you from having to roll them. I also refrigerate the rest of the dough and only make as many as we will eat in one sitting.