Can you believe tomorrow is Christmas!?  Eeek, I’m so excited!!!  I love baking during the holidays and it’s even more fun now that my daughter is old enough to help me. This Christmas we decided to start a new tradition and put a twist on sugar cookies and make hand prints with my niece and nephews.  These cookies are perfect for making today and then you can leave them out for Santa tonight!

First you’ll need to whip up a batch of sugar cookie dough. The recipe I used is from Martha Stewart.

Ingredients
For Dough
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, for decorating

For Decorating
1 large egg white
1 teaspoon water
Sanding sugar

Directions
1. In a large bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugar on medium speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg, and beat until smooth, about 1 minute.
3. Add reserved flour mixture, and mix on low speed until thoroughly combined. Stir in vanilla. Wrap dough in plastic, and refrigerate for about 45 minutes.
4. Make cookie pattern and heart stencil while wrapped dough is chilling. For the pattern, have your child trace his or her hand on a manila file folder, and cut out the tracing. You will lay this on the dough and trace around it with the tip of a paring knife. For the heart stencil, cut a heart shape from a piece of parchment paper, discarding center.
5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. On a well-floured work surface, roll out cold dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out hand shapes. Transfer cookies to prepared baking sheets. Refrigerate until firm, about 15 minutes. Dough scraps may be re-rolled twice.
6. To decorate the cookies with sanding sugar hearts, lay the heart stencil over a cookie. Combine the egg white with the water in a small bowl. Brush the egg wash in the heart, and sprinkle with sanding sugar. Lift stencil and repeat with remaining cookies. Bake until edges just begin to brown lightly, 8 to 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on pans for 3 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

While the dough was chilling we traced all the kid’s hand prints.

We even traced my 3 month old niece’s hand, it’s so little!

Once the dough was ready I rolled it out on the counter.

Then I put the hand prints down and traced around them with a knife.

Once I’d cut the hand prints out I let the kids have some fun cutting out gingerbread men and candy canes. They loved cutting the shapes out but I think they loved eating the dough even more.

This was a really fun twist on sugar cookies and I think they turned out adorable, especially little Violet’s!

Malea’s hand, 3 years old

Weston’s hand, 2 years old

Parker’s hand, 4 years old

I think making and decorating sugar cookies is such a fun holiday tradition! Do you ever make sugar cookies with your kids?