Orange Sugar Cookies

This week’s theme for the Dishing It Up recipe hop is Christmas cookies.  My first thoughts were “Christmas cookies? I don’t make those!”  In all honesty, I’m a chocolate kind of girl.  I’m also a lazy kind of girl, so my idea of Christmas cookies is to use the Christmas swirl chocolate chips in my recipe for ready to bake chocolate chip cookies so that I can have them fresh anytime I want.
Somehow I didn’t think that really counted as Christmas cookies though. So I thought back several years and remembered that I did used to make some sweet sugar cookies with some of our older kids. They are always a lot of fun to let the kids decorate.

Orange Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, loose
extra white sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract (real extract is best)
1 tsp orange zest
various candies and edibles for cookie decorations

Directions
Grate orange zest and set aside.
Sift and mix flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Wisk eggs in bowl large enough for all ingredients.
Add all other ingredients and mix well.
Add the flour, powder, salt mixture and blend well.
Chill in fridge.

Flour countertop and roll out 1/3 of the dough at a time to about 1/3″ thickness.
Use Christmas cookie cutters to cut the dough.
Peel away extra dough and pack it back into a dough ball.
Refrigerate all the extra dough and reroll it after it’s chilled again.
Use a spatula to move the cookie to the cookie tray (ungreased).

Sprinkle extra sugar on top and bake at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.
The key to not burning them is to remove them from the oven before they start to brown.
Let cool for 2 minutes, then use spatula to remove the cookies to a cooling rack.
After cooling about 5 minutes, use sugar crystals, icing, M&Ms, Red Hots, sprinkles, coconut and any other edibles to decorate your Christmas treats!