Makes about 3 dozen
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup margarine or butter, softened
2/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Food Coloring (optional)
Holiday-shaped cookie cutters (tree, heart, shamrock, angel, flower, pumpkin, etc...)
- Grease and flour 2 large cookie sheets.
- In a large bowl, with mixer at low speed, beat margarine and 2/3 cup sugar until blended. Increase speed to high; beat until light and creamy. Reduce speed to low.
- Add baking powder, vanilla, salt, egg, 1 1/2 cups flour, and 2 tablespoons water. Beat until blended.
- Place 1/2 dough in medium bowl; with wooden spoon, stir in remaining 1/2 cup flour. If you would like the cookies to be festive, simply use food coloring to color this portion of the dough. Use red for Christmas or Valentine's Day; use green for St. Patrick's Day or May Day; use Orange for Halloween; and so on.
- Stir cocoa into dough remaining in large bowl. On lightly floured surface, with floured rolling pin, roll vanilla dough 1/8 inch thick.
- Preaheat oven to 350F.
- With floured 3-inch round scallop shaped cookie cutter, cut vanilla dough into as many cookies as possible. Reserve trimmings.
- Place cookies on 1 cookie sheet about 1/4 inch apart. Repeat with chocolate dough, placing chocolate cookies on second cookie sheet.
- With 1 1/2 inch round scallop shaped cookie cutter, cut out small round holes in the center of each vanilla and chocolate cookie.
- Fit a small vanilla cookie in each chocolate cookie to make two-tone cookies.
- Sprinkle cookies lightly with 2 teaspoons sugar.
- Bake cookies on two oven racks 12-15 minutes, rotating cookie sheets between upper and lower racks halfway through baking time, until golden.
- With spatula, transfer cookies on wire racks to cool.
- Gather trimmings, reroll and cut out more cookies, follow instructions 6 - 12.
- Store cookies in tightly covered container.
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