Christmas Butter Cookies

This is another cut-out cookie recipe found in my grandmother's cookie recipe file. It's a newspaper clipping which means it probably came from the Chicago Tribune. The paper is quite tanned and probably dates back to the 1950's or 1960's.

The recipe said to chill the dough several hours. I made the dough last night, so it chilled for approximately 24 hours, which was too long. It was quite hard and impossible to roll out, so I had to soften the dough a bit at room temperature first.

Be sure to reserve the egg white from the second egg for brushing on the tops of the cookies.

I think this recipe is a definite keeper, although a more appropriate name might be Christmas Lemon Butter Cookies. My husband and I are fans of lemon anything, and the lemon rind in this recipe makes this cookie delicious. I used freshly grated rind from a real lemon - no dried lemon peel from a jar for this cookie!

Isn't it funny how they spell "cooky" in the body of the recipe?

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp grated lemon rind

3 cups sifted flour

1/2 tsp salt

Colored sugar, silver dragees

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk. Add lemon rind. Sift flour and salt; gradually work into butter mixture. As dough stiffens, work flour in with hands until dough is smoothly blended and stiff enough to roll. Wrap dough in waxed paper and chill for several hours. Roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness on floured pastry cloth. Cut with cooky cutters, place on ungreased baking sheets, bush with remaining egg white, and decorate with colored sugar, silver dragees, or as preferred. Bake at 375 degrees F. for about 8 minutes. Remove from cooky sheets immediately and cool on racks.

The stated yield is 8 to 9 dozen, but I don't think I'll get that many out of the batch because I'm using primarily larger angel and reindeer cutters. I sprinkled the cookies with cake mate brand "red crystals decors." The angels were a bit "fragile," and I found that letting the cookies rest on the baking sheet for a while helped eliminate breakage. I'm sure it's just a design issue because the reindeer came off the sheet in fine shape.

These cookies should freeze quite well.