Peppermint Candy Cane Christmas Sugar Cookies

Candy Cane Sugar Cookie Recipe

• 3¾ cups sifted, all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1½ cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks), room temperature
• 1½ tsp pure vanilla extract
• Red food coloring
• *Optional* Peppermint extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, stir together flour and baking powder.

In another bowl, beat butter with sugar until fluffy and light.

Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Stir in flour mixture, a third at a time to make a stiff dough.

Separate dough into two equal parts and add red food coloring to half.  *Optional* You may also choose to add some peppermint extract.

*For best results, refrigerate for 15 minutes before rolling out cookie dough.

Take a small ball of dough and use your hands to roll into long cylinder (you know, the way you used to make a “snake” out of Play-doh?!)

Make several of these long ropes of cookie dough.  Alternating the red and white pieces, place close together and roll out, using a piece of wax paper between the dough and rolling pin.

Roll dough out on floured counter-top.  Make cookies approx. 3/8 inch thick.

You should be able to reuse the dough that remains around each cookie and still separate the colors if you keep it refrigerated between each use (if you let the dough get too warm, you two colors of dough will stick together and you probably won’t be able to re-use it).

Bake 8-10 minutes.

Icing
1 Tbsp butter, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla (or peppermint)
2 ½ cup confectioners sugar
3 Tbsp milk
Beat butter, vanilla, and confectioner’s sugar until smooth.
Add in milk 1 Tbsp at a time.