Yesterday was cookie making day, since I have a cookie exchange to go to today. Are you familiar with cookie exchanges? Well, if not, I'll tell you about it. My friend has a cookie exchange every year. She invites girl friends over and has a little party, with food and drinks. Each of the attendees brings a certain amount of a certain type of cookie (this year we are supposed to bring 6-7 dozen cookies. After we eat, we do the exchange. All of the cookies get set out and we all get a certain number of each type of cookie! So, today I'll arrive with 7 dozen sugar cookies, but I'll go home with 7 dozen assorted types of cookies, made by all of the other girls. It's great, because I don't have to go through the work of making all those different types of cookies.

I decided to make some sugar cookies, since they're fun and you can ice them. They're very Christmasy to me. I used the recipe out of my 1973 edition Good Housekeeping cookbook (better known as "the red cookbook" or "the big cookbook") that my mom gave me as a gift several years ago. If you don't have that cookbook, you need to get it. It's the go-to cookbook in this house.

I was really excited about rolling out these cookies because the kids were having rest time, and David was out of the house hauling a car for his friend. That meant I had quiet, uninterrupted (well, the kids didn't quite get that concept yesterday) time to bake my cookies! I turned on the Christmas music station on TV and went to town!

First, I rolled out the dough. I like it fairly thin, and I also wanted to stretch the recipe a bit.


I got a new snowflake shaped cookie cutter from Bylers when Becky and I went during her Thanksgiving visit.


I lined the pan with parchment paper, so I didn't have to grease the pan. I just recently (within the last year) starting using parchment paper in the kitchen, and I LOVE it.


All baked. 8.5 dozen cookies. Now for the icing.


I used the decorative icing recipe from the same cookbook. It was simple. 1 1/4 cups confectioners sugar, 1/8 tsp cream of tartar, and an egg white. Mix on high speed until you can run a knife through it and the line stays.

Then I tried to decorate the cookies so they looked something like this, but that quickly flew out the window. That's hard! So instead, I thought it would be pretty to sprinkle some blue sugar on the icing. Only, I didn't have any blue sugar. It's ok, I thought. I'll just mix some blue food coloring in my sugar and mix it up! Well, I didn't have any liquid food coloring, only gel. Oops. So, I put the sugar in the food processor and added some food coloring. This is what I ended up with.


But I like it. It's kinda pretty with the flecks of blue.

So this is what the cookies ended up looking like.


It took a few hours and 2 batches of icing to frost all of them.


But I think they're cute. And I'm excited for the exchange!!


And I have a dozen and a half cookies left over that we can eat at home! Sweet!