Sugar Gems

My all-time favorite food is a great big sugar cookie, plain with plain frosting.  My two other favorite foods are vanilla ice cream and  plain vanilla pound cake.  I guess I just like the taste of vanilla - pure and simple.  Now, I take a lot of kidding about this.  I love to cook and make lots of interesting recipes, but when the dishes are cleared away and the guests are gone, I bring out the good stuff....little white slices of frosted goodness.

Sometimes I cave and get tired of the ridicule from my family of being such a "boring eater"  as was the case today.  So, when I made my favorite cookies, I decided to jazz them up a bit although the plain and wonderful taste of frosted sugar cookies remains.



Sugar Gems

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, softened
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
various food colors

Frosting
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
colored decorator sugars

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.   In a medium bowl, mix together the butter, vegetable shortening, and sugar.  Add the egg, milk, and vanilla extract.  Add the flour mixture. Add a few drops of food coloring to 1/3 of the dough.  Repeat with two other colors.  Drop by tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes.  Remove from the sheet and allow to cool on a wire rack. Mix the butter and powdered sugar together.  Add the milk and vanilla.  Frost cookies and sprinkle with different colors of decorator sugar. (You can also press the frosted cookie into the sugars poured onto a dish for a thicker coating of sugar.) Makes 3 dozen cookies.


Step 1: Sift dry ingredients together and set aside.  Then, mix together the butter, shortening and sugar.




Step 2:  Add the milk, and vanilla.



Step 3:  Add the dry ingredients.  It is a very soft dough - almost like a thick batter.




Step 4: Tint a portion of the dough.  I don't usually even pull the dough out.  It makes too many bowls to wash.  Typically, I just swirl the food coloring in a portion of the dough while still in the regular mixing bowl.



Step 5:  Scoop cookies out onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Here are some plain ones. I left a third of the dough untinted.  The other two thirds were pink and lavender.



Step 6:  While the cookies are baking, mix together the frosting.  You can tint this any color or leave it white.  The sugar covers it so I left mine white.  All these wild and crazy colors of the batter and sugars were stressing me anyway so I had to leave one part of it alone. Baby steps, baby steps...




 My family enjoyed my audacious venture but I was happy too, because hidden in all the sparkling color was my old favorite - the best sugar cookie ever.

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