BAKE | NO-CHILL SUGAR COOKIES

The last 25 minutes of Jesus' birthday and I almost forgot to finish this post! So, Merry Christmas!
My family woke up early this morning to cook breakfast at my grandparents' house. That meant fluffy blueberry belgium waffles, bacon, sausage, over-easy eggs, tater tots, and hash browns. (We love our crispy potatoes!) My little sister kept asking when we were returning home to open presents. I told her all her secret Santa got her this years were hugs. She wasn't amused.
These cookies we made to give out tonight to our aunts and uncles. Last year I swore I would NEVER make sugar cookies again after all the time spend chilling, rolling, and cookie cutting sticky dough. By the time I was done cutting out all the cookies I gave up on the idea of piping icing and settled on sprinkles.
When I saw the title of this recipe I forgot all about last year's sugar cookie making disaster. And I wasn't disappointed.

Cold cubes of butter.

 Add in the sugar.

 Measure out your dry ingredients...

 Sugar and butter gets creamed. Then add in the vanilla and egg!

 No need to wait for the dough to chill! Sprinkle some flour on your rolling surface. Wrap your rolling pin in plastic wrap for easy clean-up. Rough out that dough and punch out the cookies.

 We started out with the big cookie cutters...

 Then we realized that the little cookie cutters are so much cuter! 

Put your cut out cookie in the freezer for 10 minutes.

 Fresh baked cookies. Aren' they cute?

Ingredients:
COOKIE DOUGH adapted from Bake at 350

• 3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup sugar 
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cold & cut into chunks
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Combine the flour and baking powder, set aside. 
3. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg and extracts and mix. 
4. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat just until combined, scraping down the bowl, especially the bottom. The dough will be crumbly, so knead it together with your hands as you scoop it out of the bowl for rolling.
5. Roll on a floured surface to about 1/2" thick, and cut into shapes. 
6. Place on parchment lined baking sheets
7. Freeze the cut out shapes on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before baking. This ensures the your shapes keep during the baking and prevents the smaller more complicated cut outs from baking into a glob.
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let sit a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack. 
9. Frost and add sprinkles. 

I used pink and light green frosting and red and green sugar crystals. Don't my reindeer kind of look like unicorns or My Little Pony. haha oh well. They are as good as they look and don't crumble easily if you'd like to stack them in boxes to give away. I can't wait to make sugar cookies for every special occasion since this method is so darn easy and I don't have to wait 2 hours to chill the dough before I can get to baking! Easy peasy! Hope your Christmas was as special as mine.

xoxo, allison