My Framboise Brownie Cookies are included in Gourmet Girl’s Holiday Cookie Crawl. If you’d like to vote for me, you can click here. I’d appreciate it! Thanks!

Before my PhotoHunt post, I’d like any of you who are either in the Phillipines, or who have contacts in the Phillipines, to see the following message and pass it on to your friends. Maybe in this weird, roundabout kind of way, we can reunite a lost pet with its family: Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) – MISSING DOG NAMED: FERGIE animaladvocates.multiply.com

Fergie went missing last Saturday morning Dec 19, 2009. She’s last seen in the area of Gen. Ordonez(Molave) St. Marikina Heights, Marikina City. Our family is hoping and praying that she’s in good hands and we can still recover her. Her adopted brothers and sister are waiting for her to come home.

Now, on with the This is my Twelfth and final post for The Twelve Days of Cookies project, baking twelve recipes from the Bon Appetít Holiday Cookie-a-Day collection. As further connection to Twelve, I baked them at Twelve o’clock midnight, for exactly Twelve minutes! Come on – it doesn’t get much more twelve-er than that!

Christmas Cutouts with Vanilla Icing

Ingredients:

Cookies

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Additional sugar

Icing

• 4 cups (or more) sifted powdered sugar (sifted, then measured)
• 3 tablespoons (or more) whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Colored sugar crystals, sprinkles, and/or decors

Preparation:

For cookies:
Sift first 3 ingredients into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and 1 cup sugar in large bowl to blend well. Add egg, sour cream, and vanilla; beat 1 minute. Beat in dry ingredients in 2 additions until just blended. Gather dough together; divide in half. Flatten each half into disk; wrap in plastic and chill 1 hour. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled. Soften dough slightly at room temperature before rolling out.)

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Sprinkle work surface and top of dough disks with additional sugar. Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough to 1/4-inch thickness (dough will be very soft). Using assorted 2- to 3-inch cookie cutters, cut out cookies. Transfer to prepared sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Gather scraps and roll out on sugared surface; cut out more cookies. Repeat until all dough is used. Chill all cookies on baking sheets at least 15 minutes and up to 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until light golden at edges, about 12 minutes. Transfer cookies to racks and cool completely.

For icing:
Combine 4 cups powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons milk, and vanilla in medium bowl. Stir until icing is well blended, smooth, and spreadable, adding more milk by teaspoonfuls if too thick or more sugar by tablespoonfuls if too thin. Using small icing spatula or table knife, spread thin layer of icing atop each cookie. If using colored sugar crystals, sprinkle over cookies before icing sets. If using food-safe colored markers, let icing dry about 30 minutes; decorate cookies as desired. (Can be made 3 days ahead. Store airtight between sheets of waxed paper at room temperature.)

*My Notes:

To begin, I will repeat for the umpteenth time: I am not a food stylist! Nowhere on my résumé does it say “food stylist”. Why I chose a decorated cut-out cookie for my twelfth post in this series, is absofreakinglutely beyond me. Call me a masochist.

This is another very soft cut-out cookie, but at least they warn you this time, and it softens up out of the fridge in just a couple of minutes.

Seeing as Christmas is over, I didn’t feel compelled to make Holiday shapes, opting instead for the cow and the moose. These are large cutters, so I took Alton Brown’s advice and, using a spatula, transferred them to the cookie sheet with the cutters still in place, lifting them off afterward. This is a pretty smart maneuver to use with any cut-out cookies that might go wrong on you in the process. Thanks, Alton!

The cow and the moose, by the way, represent (very) little private jokes with my husband, going back to our trips to Ireland and western Canada, respectively. No, I’m not going to share them with you – you already think I’m an idiot. Why make it worse?

By the next time we meet, I will be another year older, and so will the Earth! My most heartfelt and sincere best wishes for you and yours – Have a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year!

Please visit my partners in holiday baking, below, and see what they’ve got in store for you. Bedeebedeebedee, that’s all, folks!

Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes (honorary member and our founder but not participating this year)
Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen
Courtney of Coco Cooks
Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
Judy of No Fear Entertaining
Kelly of Sass & Veracity
Michelle of Big Black Dog
RJ of Flamingo Musings (hey! that’s me!)
Sandy of At the Baker’s Bench
Tiffany of The Nesting Project