Brown Sugar Cutouts.

Sunday afternoon, after getting back from Easter at home, i remembered that I had some Easter cookie cutters stashed away that i had meant to use. I didn't get many Easter recipes in this month, where the holiday was so late this year, i never really thought of it until the last minute. Looking at the cookie cutters, i see that they could be used for Spring as well as Easter, so i picked this recipe in the hopes that the sun will shine again soon. It has been rainy the past two days, and supposed to be the same the rest of the week. 'April Showers bring May Flowers', they say. Here's hoping May comes fast, I can't wait for the sun!! 

I don't know where I got this recipe, i have it in my binder. I may have copied it out of a magazine a few years ago, that is where most of the recipes in my binder have come from.

Brown Sugar Cutout Cookies. 

1 cup shortening or butter.

1 cup backed brown sugar.

2 eggs.

1 tsp vanilla extract.

3 cups all purpose flour.

2 tsp cream of tarter.

1 tsp baking soda.

1/2 tsp salt.

In large bowl, beat shortening with sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs, one at a time, beat until combined. In separate bowl, whisk together flour, cream of tarter, baking soda and salt. Stir in by half cupfuls to make stiff dough. 

Divide dough in half and shape into disks. Wrap and refrigerate at least 30 minutes, but up to 2 days. 

On lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. With decorative cutters, cut out shapes. Transfer to prepared pans, leaving one inch between cookies.

Bake in 350 F oven until golden on bottom, about 10 minutes. Transfer to rack to cool. 

I do not recommend mixing all the dry ingredients together, as i only needed about 2 cups of flour. I have no cream of tarter, so i did an internet search and found that if a recipe calls for it and baking soda, you can substitute baking powder for both; so i used 3 tsp of baking powder. I mixed that into the first cup of flour and then added the rest a half cup at a time.

The dough was very soft before refrigerating, if i had not followed that instruction i probably would have had a hard time rolling them out and would have needed to add more flour. The cold dough was extremely easy to work with, i only had one little bit stick to my rolling pin. 

I used each of these cutters eight times, so i got 32 cookies. If you use a smaller cutter, you could easily get three or even four dozen. These cookies are nice and light, not to sweet. I am not planning on icing them, but it would be a great recipe to use for iced cookies. 

Hope everyone is having a good week, it is half over already! I am off today and tomorrow since I have to work the weekend. Have a good day!