For The Love of Cookie Cutters


There's something both relaxing and exciting about cutting out cookies. It might be the anticipation after making and then refrigerating the cookie dough. Then waiting for it to be ready. 

I use the same recipe when cutting out cookies. I found it years ago in the December, 1982 issue of Ladies' Home Journal with Drew Barrymore when she was a little girl on the cover. The recipe was included in a section highlighting favorite Cookie Recipes from 'Superstars.' The recipe I use is Dolly Parton's Christmas Sugar Cookies. I still have my copy of that issue. I go to the cupboard and bring the magazine out every time I make those cookies. The page the recipe is on is smeared with flour as well as grease stains from butter and remains of the dough itself. It's also sprinkled with love as that page has bought joy and fun and precious memories over the years. I really don't need to get the magazine out and turn to page 95 because I know the recipe by heart. I get the magazine out because it has become part of my process when making Dolly Parton's sugar cookies. 

So after the dough is rolled out, the fun of cutting out the cookies begins. And that means choosing the cookie cutters I keep in Ball glass mason jars. If I am the only one making the cookies, I usually use the old tin heart cookie cutter. It was my grandmother's. By using such a small cookie cutter, the end result is more cookies. 

But if the scenario changes and I'm cutting out cookies with two excited grandchildren, more often than not all the cookie cutters come out of the jars. And that includes cookie cutters that belonged to my mother, some of them bought at the local Woolworths or Newberry's. That also includes cookie cutters shaped like elephants and horses and cats and gingerbread men and Santas and stars and snowflakes and snowmen. 

When those grandchildren really get into it, they don't use the cookie cutters. They use their imaginations which has produced a cookie dough house for a cookie dough kitten as well as a cookie dough island surrounded by both cookie dough fish and fish cut out of paper attached to toothpicks turned fishing poles. Cookie dough puppies have been created as well as a cookie dough family of puppies and a house for all the puppies. Of course when all of these cookie dough creations went into the oven, they turned to blobs. But that didn't stop the laughter. It only created more. And all of those original creations were still quite delicious.

Taking the time to make the dough, refrigerate the dough and then choosing cookie cutters to cut out the dough is a creative endeavor, baking up wonderful memories and making more flour and butter stains on page 95 of the December, 1982 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal.
 

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