WARNING: Do not eat more than ten cookies in one sitting. This is pure cholesterol in a neat and tidy package.

What you'll need:

  • four sticks (one pound) of salted butter. Real butter. Do not profane this recipe with margarine or any other substitute, or suffer like the infidel you are.
  • four cups of flour. That bleached white stuff.
  • one and a half cups of brown sugar. Make sure to break up any big Lumps in here. Of course, you could just leave them in, but don't blame me when you chip a tooth on that lump of carmelized sugar.
  • various flavorings. My favorite is vanilla, but you can use other kinds just as well. Make sure you have at least two tablespoons worth around.
  • about three to four hours of spare time.

First, the butter. Unwrap it, then chuck all four sticks into a large plastic mixing bowl. Nuke them for about thirty seconds on high so that they're slightly runny, but not melted.

Now, take the brown sugar and dump about half of it in with the butter. If you followed directions, there shouldn't be any lumps to make the next part more difficult than it has to be. Mix the butter and sugar like a madman until they're well blended, then toss in the flavoring and the rest of the sugar. You guessed it, keep mixing.

Now, once you have that sloshed into a nicely amorphous mass, add in about a third of the flour. Fold it into the mix until everything turns the same color. Follow up with the remaining two thirds of the flour and treat them in a similar fashion.

At this point you should preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and get out a few cookie sheets (or pans- see the following paragraph).

You should now have a fair amount of a sticky, light tan substance. There are several possibilities open to you now. you can:

  • say, "to hell with this," roll out the dough on a cookie sheet and just cut apart whatever comes out of the oven.
  • be a good little androgynous figure, roll it out to about a quarter of an inch thick and use all sorts of pretty cookie cutters to dress up your artery cloggers.
  • or you can do what I always do: grab a glass, roll it out to the aformentioned quarter inch, and start making circles.
Once you have a sufficient number cut out- say, around twenty- arrange them on a cookie sheet so none of the edges are touching, then pop them in the now-hot oven for around fifteen minutes. When they come out, they should be a light golden brown and smell like buttery heaven.

I've never been able to figure out an exact number of how many come out per batch due to wild dogs and hungry older brothers, but it should make at least forty to sixty cookies. Feel free to post variations.

This is my family's recipe. More Christmas cookies!

Ingredients:

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the flavoring and flour. Roll into balls, flatten with your fingers, and prick with a fork (I don't know why that last step is important, but TRUST ME, it is. Put about four rows of fork-holes in).

Bake at 300oF for 20 to 25 minutes. They should still be fairly pale when they come out of the oven.

Yet another recipe, easy to remember because of the 3:2:1 ratio...

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
2 cups unsalted butter(=4 sticks)
1 cup sugar

Directions:
Blend the butter and sugar. Add the flour. Place on a cookie sheet, perforate, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes while you pre-heat your oven to 350 F. Bake until the edges start to brown (about 15 minutes).
Notes:
You may have to play with the amount of flour to get the right consistency (neither too oily nor too crumbly).

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