I’ll be honest.  Halloween is not my favorite.  Lucky me, my kids think it is the greatest holiday ever, aside from Christmas.  An easy way for me to show some spirit is to break out the cookie cutters.  Using the all-time best sugar cookie recipe, I make the dough while they are at school.  Once we are ready, I roll and they do the cutting.  But, of course,  decorating is where the fun is at.  I stick to an extremely simple frosting -just powdered sugar and milk {recipe is included with recipe}.  I love AmeriColor food coloring for their vibrant colors-including black.  I give the boys five or six cookies to frost.  We store them separately and those are theirs to eat.  {This way, I don’t have to worry about them licking the knives and believe me they do!} New this year are these darling candy eyes.  The boys loved them and they are a super easy way to add that little something extra!

Baking and frosting cookies is a pretty great way to spend an afternoon with my crazies.  Plus, the cookies are damn good!

The Basic Sugar Cookie (with a few tips)- from Everyday Food | Holiday ’06

2 cups flour

½ tsp. Baking powder

¼ tsp. Salt

1 stick butter  (room temperature)

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. Vanilla extract

Whisk together flower, baking powder and salt.  In mixer, beat butter and sugar.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  With mixer on low, add dry ingredients gradually. Beat until combined.  Divide dough in half; flatten into disks.  Wrap each disk in plastic. Freeze until firm-at least 20 minutes (or refrigerate overnight).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Remove dough and let stand for 10 minutes.  Roll dough and cut out shapes on floured surface.  (First tip is to roll dough thick.  This makes softer cookies.)  Bake for 10-18 minutes.  (Second tip is to pull cookies from oven when edges are JUST golden.  You don’t want to over bake your cookies.)

Easy icing:

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

3-4 Tbs. Milk.

Whisk together.  Add food coloring if you would like.  Frost cookies and let set, about 20 minutes.