First Recreated Pin!

I keep pinning things on Pinterest but have yet to actually DO any of the thing's I have pinned. Until yesterday......

There was this pin, which I thought was awesome! I love making sugar cookies, but never have any creative ideas to do with them, besides icing them and then they're too sweet to actually enjoy.

Unfortunately, the original pinner did not pin the actual project, but a website. I looked for a while, found what they were talking about, but there were no instructions on how to do this, or a recipe. Obviously the HOW is pretty simple, you color some of the dough different shades and use leaf cookie cutters.

I'm always looking for a sugar cookie recipe, I've had lots of good ones, but never seem to be able to keep track of them long enough to say "this is the recipe I use". I found this recipe, which gave a really nice, not super sweet cookie, but it made 5 dozen cookies. I don't know about you, but I seriously don't want 5 dozen sugar cookies in the house with me and a 2 year old. I halved it to this:

Rolled Sugar Cookie Recipe
* 3/4 cup butter (softened)
* 1 cup white sugar (or xylitol)
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
* 2 1/2 cup all purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp salt

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely

Here's our dough all set and ready to roll out. I made small little balls of dough on the counter and kind of mushed them together by hand (they weren't rolling together with a pin the way they should). I rolled it to my desired thickness, about 1/4", then we used our leaf cookie cutters to cut them out.

Some of the people who commented on the original post for the cookies were worried about the colors becoming muddled over progressive rollings; I actually liked the dough BETTER the more mixed up it got, because the leaves began to have more variations in them.

I also managed to make these with Ave helping, my trick: I did all the dough while she was napping. Honestly, she was more interested in playing with the dough and cookie cutters than she would have been in any of the prep work. Oh, I also use gel food coloring: I bought an 8 pack of different colors (blues, oranges, browns and purples already mixed).

These were fun cookies to make, definitely something to do again...maybe red and white for candy canes at Christmas.