Happy St. Patrick's Day

Things are a little hectic right now getting ready for the CRCT, Spring Break and my daughter has a school play today. It's days like today when you need to know the class limits and keep it simple. So, I went with the old standby - Shamrock cookies. Below is my sugar cookie recipe. I've been told it's the best. It's really Martha Stewart's recipe and is so good because it contains the holy trinity of ingredients - butter, sugar, flour:) Enjoy!

Kimberly's (I mean Martha's) Famous Sugar Cookies:)
2 sticks of BUTTER cold & cut into pieces - do NOT defame this recipe and use margarine or any other crap product that "claims" to taste like butter!!
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In an electric mixer cream the butter, sugar and eggs. Add vanilla (for some reason Martha always tells you to add this at the end but I find it doesn't get incorporated very well so I add mine at this point). Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and slowly add to the bowl with the mixer on low. Mix until JUST combined. Turn out onto a large sheet of saran wrap and form the dough into a disk). Chill for at least 20 minutes in the fridge. Roll the dough out onto a floured surface and cut out cookies. Depending on the size of the cookies you will have to adjust the baking time. I have cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes and usually I bake my cookies anwhere from 8-12 minutes. I just check on them very often after 8 minutes because you don't want them to get too brown around the edges or burn. Once the cookies have baked let them cool and then glaze them.

Glaze
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract - the REAL stuff (unless you want a super white glaze then use clear vanilla extract)
1/3 cup milk
Stir these ingredients together. It takes a minute to incorporate all the liquid into the sugar. If it's way to thick you can add a teaspoon of milk at a time - but you do not want the glaze too thin. If you want to add food coloring now would be the time. In this case, I used green powdered food coloring, but you can use liquid or paste food coloring if you want. Then you frost or glaze the cookies. I do this by literally laying the cookies face down in the bowl and then lightly picking it up while gently scraping/smoothing out the frosting. Lay the cookies on parchment paper so the won't stick as the glaze dries. ENJOY!!