Shining Stars

I recently introduced my friend and co-worker Michelle to the blog Annie's Eats and we are both semi-obsessed with all of the recipes and beautiful photos Annie posts on her blog. So much so, that Michelle emails me pics so we can both cry over our lack of awesome photography skills (and a DSLR camera). Having recently bought a set of star-shaped cookie cutters, I invited Michelle over to make some shining star cookies with me. We found the perfect excuse to make a ton of cookies: frost them in our school's colors and bring them to our "shining star" co-workers!



By the time we got to 7th grade lunch there were only two cookies left! All the teachers and office staff we work with were very appreciative of the sweet bite of school spirit we brought in.
Since the dough needs to be chilled before it's cooked, and then chilled before frosting, and the frosting outline has to harden for an hour before the flood icing, I decided to make the cookies a day in advance and just have them ready for Michelle to help frost--otherwise she would be stuck at my house until midnight! :) As it was, it still took us forever to frost all the cookies, but it made for a fun afternoon with a new friend.



I've blogged the royal icing in a separate blog post. Annie has a great tutorial with tons of helpful pictures on her site for using royal icing. I read it several times before attempting decorating my cookies for the first time.

Sugar Cookies
Source: Annie's Eats, of course!
Printable Recipe

Ingredients
1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened or room temp
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 ½ teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups flour, sifted (I measured the flour, then sifted it right into the mixing bowl)

Directions
Cream butter. Once creamed, add the powdered sugar.

Mix in the beaten egg, almond extract, vanilla extract, salt and flour.

Chill dough until firm (I put my dough in a Ziplock bag and chilled it overnight).

Roll to ¼” thickness on well-floured surface. Cut shapes with cookie cutters.

Place on greased cookie sheets and bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 min. Cookies should not brown.

Cool cookies completely before frosting.