Twelve Days of Cookies, Day 5

Today, in preparation for our holiday cookie exchange for the cooking club, I made decorated holiday cookies, with the recipe from my cooking bible, Cook's Illustrated The New Best Recipe cookbook. These cookies are so simple to make -- only 5 ingredients, and you only use a single bowl, so cleanup is a cinch. Well, until the rolling out, cutting, and decorating that is. Then things get a little trickier and a little messier.

I took the first picture before the cookies were fully decorated in case I goofed them up later. The trees came out ok, but the ornaments looked a little shabbier. I may have been trying to complicate things, but I was using two different types of icing --a royal icing and a glace. The royal icing is for outling and piping and I love the glace for filling in the cookie -- it hardens into a beautiful shiney coating. And I like the taste better. But with only three colors (red, green, and white), that meant I was actually pulling from 6 different bowls of icing.

So do you want to know what the 5 ingredients are? Here's a hint: the cookie uses no eggs, and no baking powder. Yes, butter and sugar! But what else??