Sugar Cookies

We finally finished and delivered our Pac-Man cookies to the library today!

It's teen read week, and the theme is "Take A bite out of reading", so our librarian wanted us to make Pac Man cookies. I got what is truly the best sugar cookie recipe I have ever used from the blog Good Things Catered http://goodthingscatered.blogspot.com/ and we made 250 cookies (yes, rolled, cut, and iced....what a process with ten teenagers!!) We made buttercream and royal icing, colored it yellow and red (go Heights!:) and set out to ice them today. Whew---what a project. Fortunately, I have great students who stayed through their lunch hour and came in when they were done with classes to finish icing and helping me clean up. We are so glad to be done!

Next up: tomorrow--teaching another knife skills class, which means another round of Zippy Potato Soup (recipe in a previous post), then next week I am demonstrating cooking techniques, so we are making Sweet and Sour Pork with vegetables and brown rice. I will post that next week--it's great!

And the focaccia from the other night....all gone! We had excellent sandwiches on it on Monday. Last night I made some chicken and rice soup and we finished it off with that. Oh it's sooooo good! I can't wait to make it for our food sale at school!

Oh, and these cookies are sooooo not good for you, but enjoy one anyway!! Don't forget to cream the butter for 5 minutes. We tried not to, and it definitely does make a difference!

BEST EVER Sugar Cookies

from Good Things Catered

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. butter
1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. powdered sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 Tbsp lemon zest
5 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Powdered sugar, for rolling

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
-Cream butter and sugars in a mixer for 5 minutes.
-Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly.
-Add vanilla, almond, and lemon zest.
-Sift in flour, baking powder, and salt a little at a time.
-Do not over mix, this process should take about one minute.
-Chill dough for up to a week in the fridge, or roll out and cut right away.
-Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake cookies for 7-8 minutes.
-Wait until cookies are cooled before icing.

I found that this recipe made 30-32 big, thick cookies. I decorated the cookies with an edge of buttercream, filling of royal icing, and decoration with buttercream.