Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Valentine's Day Cookies

Happy Valentine's Day! These are from my Mama! I love tulips!
Every year, my mom and I used to get together and make Valentine's cookies for her children's choir at church. Well...since my parents moved to TN, i can't exactly just drop by to make cookies. But I still wanted to continue the cookie tradition AND Mama had given me some Valentine's cookie cutters. SO, I decided to go in search of a good sugar cookie recipe (the one I used at Christmas was not so good) and make some cookies for my medical school class. Well, I found the perfect recipe. My classmates enjoyed the cookies as did my M1 buddies. What better than a Valentine's cookie to break the bore of a neuropathology lecture!? Sugar Cookies from The Cookie Bible
1 cup butter flavor shortening
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons milk
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4-5 cups AP flour (I used 4 1/2)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon salt
Cream shortening and sugars together until well mixed. Add milk. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together. Add to creamed mixture slowly. Wrap in saran wrap and chill for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Divide dough into manageable portions. Flour your working surface. Flour the top of the dough and the rolling pin. Roll the dough until 1/2 inch thick. use cookie cutters or a biscuit cutter to make cookie shapes. Place on cookie pan and put in oven. Bake for 6-8 minutes or until slightly browned.
To decorate you can sprinkle with colored sugar prior to baking or spread with icing after they have cooled. Above all...enjoy and share with someone you love!

8 comments:

Red Dirt Mummy said...

Wow! You have the nicest Mama, Claire. Your tulips are beautiful. And the cookies look good too - glad your buddies enjoyed them.

Linda said...

Did you like this recipe better than the one from Christmas? My mother-in-law like her sugar cookies to be wafer thin. She has a recipe that enables her to make these really thin cookies. If you are interested, I can forward the recipe to you!

You are such a nice classmate. I hope that you had a great Valentines Day!

Stacy at Exceedingly Mundane said...

Oh, I love tulips too and those are just gorgeous! How sweet :)

The cookies look good too, yummy! I never seem to make anything but chocolate chips cookies, I need to branch out one day...

gail@more than a song said...

I love tulips! They are just beautiful!
And the cookies look good too.

Anonymous said...

What a great tradition! I'm glad you are keeping up with it even thought your Mom moved.

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanks for posting this recipe. I've been looking for a good sugar cookie recipe for ages. I'm hoping this is the one that will end my search. Are these cookies crispy or soft or hard crunchy?

Unknown said...

RDM - She is great! I was definitely glad to see that my class will eat if I bring something...maybe I'll do it more often.

Linda - I did like it much better. The other one was more like your MIL's and really crunchy and not sweet. I prefer softer and fluffy.

Stacy - You should try something other than chocolate chip for sure!

Gail - thanks! I'm enjoying the tulips.

kristin - I've got to keep it up so that when I have a family of my own we'll have traditions as well.

Sharmini - i really liked this one. It's fairly soft and fluffy and is sweet. Definitely a sugar cookie rather than a "tea biscuit." If you would rather have a little crispier but still a good sweet taste, check out the ones that Peabody at www.culinaryconcoctionsbypeabody.blogspot.com uses.

Unknown said...

ooops. I was wrong...no .blogspot.com, just dot com