Basic Roll and Cut Sugar Cookies

In a medium bowl, whisk together Pamela's All-Purpose Flour, baking powder, powdered sugar and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter until soft, add granulated sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and mix until well combined. Add in the dry ingredients and mix on low until dough is completely mixed, scraping down dough as needed.

Divide dough in half. Roll each piece of dough between two sheets of parchment paper until approximately ¼” thick. (Tip: if you do not have a rolling pin or if you have more than one person rolling out dough at a time, you can use an empty wine bottle or other cylinder to roll out the dough.)

Preheat oven to 350° with rack in top third of the oven. Cut out your desired shapes using cookie cutters. Remove the unwanted dough from around the shape, and then gently pick up the dough with your fingers and place onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (Using a spatula may tear the dough.) If you find that the dough is too sticky or soft, making it hard to handle, you may need to chill the dough before rolling.

Bake for 13 to 17 minutes, or until the cookies are starting to turn a golden color on the edges. (Thinner cookies will brown faster than thicker cookies.)

Let cookies cool on the baking sheet until you can handle them and then remove them to cool all the way on a wire rack.

FROSTING & GLAZE

Divide Pamela's Vanilla Frosting Mix in half and place in 2 separate bowls. (You can either weigh it out to 170g in each bowl or measure out about 1¼ cups in each bowl.)

Frosting -- this will be used to pipe frosting around the edges, to hold in the glaze frosting. This can also be used to decorate with thick frosting (like the tree shown in photo):

Put butter in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix until creamy. Add one of the bowls of frosting mix and 1 TBSP water and mix until smooth, scraping down the sides and bottom as necessary. To make different colors of frosting, divide the frosting into as many bowls as you want colors. Add the food coloring of your choice to each bowl of frosting and mix until it is the color you want. Set aside.

Glaze -- this will be used inside the piped frosting to create a smooth look:

In the other bowl of frosting mix, slowly whisk in milk until you reach a thick but pourable consistency -- go slow, as you can always add more liquid, but it is difficult to add more mix. If you do find that your glaze is too runny, you can add powdered sugar.

To make different colors, divide the glaze into bowls and add your coloring. The glaze begins to stiffen, so you will want to keep it covered while not using (use plastic wrap, or airtight containers). Tip: small, squeezable plastic bottles with caps can be found at stores that carrying decorating supplies and are a great, no-mess way to squeeze the frosting onto the cookies.

DECORATE

Now you have your thick frosting and your glaze. Using a thin round piping tip with piping bag, pipe your frosting around the edge of the cookie. Squeeze or drizzle glaze into the middle of the cookie and spread around with a toothpick until the glaze fills in all of the area in the piped frosting. Make designs with other colors of glaze, add sprinkles and candy decorations, and you have a beautifully frosted cookie!