1986 Winner Rolled Animal Cookies

Title: 1986 Winner Rolled Animal Cookies
Yield: 48 Servings
Categories: Cookies, Holiday 

Ingredients: 

      1 c  Butter, softened
      1 c  Sugar
      1    Egg
      2 tb Whipping cream
      1 ts Baking powder
    1/2 ts Baking soda
    1/2 ts Salt
      1 ts Vanilla
      3 c  Sifted all-purpose flour
           Decorations: colored sugar,
           Raisins, chocolate
           Sprinkles, chocolate chips


  Preparation time: 45 minutes Chilling time: Several hours Baking time: 7
  minutes
  
    1. Cream butter. Gradually add sugar and cream well. Blend in the egg,
  cream, baking powder, baking soda, salt and vanilla. Gradually add flour
  and mix well. Chill dough until firm, several hours (it is hard to roll out
  otherwise).
  
    2. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out dough on a floured board to about
  1/8- inch thick. Cut into desired shapes with a flour-dipped cookie cutter.
  Place on ungreased or lightly greased cookie sheet.
  
    3. Decorate with colored sugar and chocolate sprinkles and use raisins or
  chocolate chips for the eyes of the animals. Bake for 5-7 minutes or until
  a little brown. Cool on racks. Don't forget to cut the little holes if you
  wish  to hang on the tree.
  
    Note: Dough will keep several days or a week in the refrigerator if you
  don't get around to cutting right away. I store the cookies in tightly
  covered tins and they are very good keepers if the children don't find
  them.
  
    Winner Beverly Bergstrom of Hinsdale recounts making rolled animal
  cookies:   "We called them animal cookies although there were many cutters
  that were not animals. We would cut small pieces of paper drinking straws
  and insert them in the top of each cookie and then bake them. The little
  piece of  straw was removed just as the cookies came from the oven, leaving
  a perfect little hole to put a colored string through so the cookie could
  be hung on our huge Christmas tree.
  
    "My sister and I would always make sure lots of the cookies were hung
  around the back of the tree. The tree was in the corner of the living room
  leaving a space behind, where we could crawl in. A favorite pastime during
  the holiday season was to lie on the floor behind the tree and using no
  hands, take tasty bites of the cookies, leaving behind the empty strings
  decorating the tree. Grandma would always pretend anger when she
  'discovered' the empty strings and no cookie. It was a good game." from the
  Chicago Tribune annual Food Guide Holiday Cookie Contest December 4, 1986
  Posted to MM-Recipes Digest V3 #340
  
  From: Linda Place 
  
  Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 11:32:57 +0000