Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year celebration.  Congrats to Shelley and Melissa on your little girls.  How great to have babies at this time to really help the birth of Christ hit home.  And just think, they're BYU roommates in the making!

So, I've fallen off the band wagon these past few months and I haven't posted anything.  The new year is a great time to start anew.  It is one of the things I like about the new year.  I don't ever really set resolutions but I like the idea of a clean slate where I can turn over a new leaf and be a little better.  Hopefully this will translate over to my blogging...

In the spirit of something new, I thought I'd share a new sugar cookie recipe.  I made it three time in the past few weeks and I've had several people comment on how soft the cookies were.  The secret ingredient seems to be cream cheese.  I found the recipe from BeneathMyHeart.net and I only made one slight change.

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies
(from BeneathMyHeart.net)

1 C. sugar
1/2 c. margarine
1/2 c. butter
3 oz. cream cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 egg yolk
2 c. flour

Cream the sugar, butter, margarine, and cream cheese together until fluffy.  Add the salt, vanilla, almond, and egg yolk.  Once the ingredients are all mixed together, add the flour.

Allow the dough to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

After the dough has chilled, roll it out and cut out your desired shapes.  Place on a cookie sheet.  Add sprinkles at this point.

Bake for 7-10 in an oven preheated to 375.  Take the cookies out when the bottoms are just barely beginning to turn golden.

As a note, the original recipe calls for 1 cup butter or margarine.  I am a cheapskate and I don't like to put a cup of butter in anything if I can help it because it is rather pricey.  However, I found that if I used margarine the dough was extremely sticky.  When I used 1/2 butter and 1/2 cup margarine the dough wasn't as sticky and it was much easier to roll out and cut out shapes.  (And yes, I admit, butter is better but it is really hard to compete with my penchant for pinching pennies.)

Happy New Year!