Rolled Animal Cookies

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Title: 1986 Winner: Rolled Animal Cookies
Categories: Cookies, Holiday
Yield: 48 servings

1 c Butter, softened
1 c Sugar
1 Egg
2 tb Whipping cream
1 ts Baking powder
1/2 ts Baking soda
1/2 ts Salt
1 ts Vanilla
3 c Sifted all-purpose flour
Decorations: colored sugar,
Raisins, chocolate
Sprinkles, chocolate chips

Preparation time: 45 minutes Chilling time: Several hours Baking
time: 7 minutes

1. Cream butter. Gradually add sugar and cream well. Blend in the
egg, cream, baking powder, baking soda, salt and vanilla. Gradually
add flour and mix well. Chill dough until firm, several hours (it is
hard to roll out otherwise).
2. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out dough on a floured board to
about 1/8- inch thick. Cut into desired shapes with a flour-dipped
cookie cutter. Place on ungreased or lightly greased cookie sheet.
3. Decorate with colored sugar and chocolate sprinkles and use
raisins or chocolate chips for the eyes of the animals. Bake for 5-7
minutes or until a little brown. Cool on racks. Don't forget to cut
the little holes if you wish to hang on the tree.
Note: Dough will keep several days or a week in the refrigerator if
you don't get around to cutting right away. I store the cookies in
tightly covered tins and they are very good keepers if the children
don't find them.
Winner Beverly Bergstrom of Hinsdale recounts making rolled animal
cookies: "We called them animal cookies although there were many
cutters that were not animals. We would cut small pieces of paper
drinking straws and insert them in the top of each cookie and then
bake them. The little piece of straw was removed just as the cookies
came from the oven, leaving a perfect little hole to put a colored
string through so the cookie could be hung on our huge Christmas tree.
"My sister and I would always make sure lots of the cookies were
hung around the back of the tree. The tree was in the corner of the
living room leaving a space behind, where we could crawl in. A
favorite pastime during the holiday season was to lie on the floor
behind the tree and using no hands, take tasty bites of the cookies,
leaving behind the empty strings decorating the tree. Grandma would
always pretend anger when she 'discovered' the empty strings and no
cookie. It was a good game." from the Chicago Tribune annual Food
Guide Holiday Cookie Contest December 4, 1986

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