Colorful Sugar Cookie Recipes

Here is one of my favorite recipes for any holiday: the classic sugar cookie. Baked plain, with additions or decorated after baking, this cookie is simple yet extremely versatile. You can make this type of cookie special for any occasion, just by varying the decoration to match the season or event. How perfect is that?

These cookies freeze well. You can seal them in tight containers or wrap them up in foil and then put them into a freezer bag and freeze them for up to a month.

Instead of sprinkling sugar on top, you can also frost these cookies with an opaque or tinted powdered sugar glaze.

When I was a kid the family across the street made holiday sugar cookies and the two youngsters got to help with the decorating. Not only were the base cookies sort of bland and way too thin, but the decorations were the sort of thing you'd expect from toddlers: too much and too spastic. Seriously, those cookies were bad and everyone in my house used to hide when we saw them coming over with them. No one wanted to answer the door and fake being thrilled, so we would hide and they'd leave them on the steps. We used to give them to the critters in the backyard or toss 'em in the trash.

Here are some suggestions so that your cookies don't become the scourge of the neighborhood:

• Frosting - The frosting is not supposed to be thicker than the cookie part. It's almost all sugar so a little goes a long way. People want to actually taste the cookie or they'd just buy cans of frosting and eat those by themselves.
• Sprinkles - Solid all over works if it's a sugar, but not if it's a metallic, crunchy ball. Those things can be painful to chew. And some sprinkles don't actually taste all that good. There's just supposed to be "a sprinkle" of them, not a solid layer.
• Crazy decorations - Save the three-eyed snowmen and psychedelic gingerbread man for grandma to say how cute they are. If the kids aren't that skilled, it's not cute to give their insanely decorated cookies to the neighbors... it's scary!