Let's be honest: I stole this recipe from the back of a Wilton's cookie cutter container. It produces an exceptionally good cookie, tho. Grown men have been known to fight each other over a plate of these things, so proceed with caution.
WORLD DOMINATION SUGAR COOKIES
1 cup unsalted butter, softened (but not melted)
1½ cups granulated sugar
1 egg
1½ t. vanilla extract
½ t. almond extract
2¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
Preheat oven to 400° F. In mixer bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and extracts. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt; add to butter mixture a little at a time, mixing after each addition.
Do not chill dough. Divide dough into 2 balls. On a piece of parchment paper cut to fit a cookie sheet, roll a ball out into a rectangle about 1/8" thick. Cut cookies on parchment, spacing them out a bit to allow them to grow during baking. Carefully remove excess dough from parchment and reserve to roll out again, leaving behind cut-out cookies. Move parchment with cookies directly onto cookie sheet (see, this way you don't have to worry about the dough toughening up from too much flour, or transferring the cookies to the cookie sheet with a spatula and having the soft dough deform into weird shapes! Yay for keeping things simple!).
Bake 6 to 7 minutes or until cookies are very lightly browned. Repeat process until dough is gone. Allow cookies to cool, then frost with homemade buttercream frosting and decorate as desired. Give to your friends, or to people who will soon be your friends, because COOKIES.
Makes about 4 dozen small and tasty cookies.
Source: Soozcat. OK, and Wilton. Sheesh.
