To kick-start the spirit of the season at home, we made these decorated butter cookies in ornament shapes. The dough was easy to make and we took turns rolling it and cutting out the shapes, assembly-line style. I like it more than the standard sugar cookie, which often has no flavor except plain old sugar. These have a sweetness offset by just a hint of saltiness and a nice buttery flavor. Decorating them was a pain. If you use royal icing, set aside a lot of time to dry, and know that colors darken as they sit. Using half a bottle of red coloring was an error! And use powdered or gel coloring if you can -- I have a feeling the liquid coloring added lots of hours to the drying time. More on that later. I had planned to mail these out to someone, but 24 hours later some still were not dry. Oh well, more cookies for us!
