4th Fun

For the 4th I decided to make star-shaped sugar cookies. I hadn't tried baking with my 2-year old before. Overall I think it went really well. I scooped the ingredients for her, but let her dump them in the mixer and turn the mixer on. I let her cut all the stars out from the dough; I got about one decent star shape each time I rolled out the dough because she went a little crazy with it and keep cutting the same pieces over and over. We used our Christmas gels and sprinkles to decorate the cookies.

My great-aunt Marilyn's sugar cookie recipe:

- 1 C sugar

- 1 tsp grated lemon rind (I doubled it for more lemon flavor)

- 3/4 C softened butter

- 1 tsp vanilla

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 2 1/4 C flour

- 1 egg

- 1 tsp baking powder

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Cream sugar, butter, and salt.

3. Beat in egg, lemon rind, and vanilla till light and fluffy.

4. Add flour and baking power mixture gradually into butter mixture.

5. Chill dough (roughly 2 hours or overnight).

6. Roll out on floured board until 1/8" thick.

7. Cut into various shapes.

8. Put on very lightly greased cookie sheet and sprinkle with more sugar. (I omitted adding the extra sugar on top at this step since I was adding gels and sprinkles later.)

9. Bake until lightly browned at edges 9-12 min.

10. Cool on wire racks. After cookies have cooled off, decorate with gels and sprinkles.

* Makes approximately 2-3 dozen cookies depending on the size of your cutters.

"Decorating" her cookie.  Notice I didn't have time to take the camera out before she'd already eaten the whole cookie.

Izzy shook sprinkles on her cookie while I held onto the bottles. She enjoyed scooping and eating the extras.

Batch of cookies made with about half of the dough.

Stars, stripes, fireworks, and American flag decorations.