Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Cream Cheese Frosting

My kids loved these sugar cookies growing up. They make great holiday cookies, the recipe is easy to double or triple, depending on how many you need, but I use this recipe for any occasion. With cookie cutters of every shape and size and for every holiday, I would make these cookies for all occasions and parties. 

My kids, all of the neighborhood kids and the children in my home based child care would gather around the table for any festive occasion and wait for their plate (a “standing room only” event for sure!). I would give each child a paper plate, a giant cookie (gingerbread boys and girls, great pumpkins or ghosts, alphabet letters with their initial, bunnies, chicks or dinosaurs), an enormous pile of home made frosting, a plastic knife and shakers filled with colored sprinkles. 

I think they ate as many sprinkles and globs of frosting as they did cookies but it was always a great time with lots of laughs and messy, sticky fingers and faces. One of my goals as Mom was to have fun, laugh a lot and make great memories for my kids, this is definitely one of my great memories and I hope it is for them.

Trying to come up with a new twist on an old favorite, I started experimenting with holiday ingredients and came up with my Eggnog Cream Cheese Frosting to use with these cookies. Don’t get me wrong, they are excellent with a traditional butter cream frosting and I love them plain, right out of the oven but I was feeling creative so here you have it. 

Sugar Cookies 

1-1/2 Cups Powdered Sugar

1 Cup Butter, softened

1 Egg

1-1/2 teaspoon Vanilla

½ teaspoon Almond Extract

2-1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Cream of Tartar

Mix sugar, butter, egg, vanilla and almond extract well. Stir in flour, soda and Cream of tartar, cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours.

Heat oven to 350, divide dough into halves, roll each half out to 3/16” thick on a lightly floured, cutting board or counter. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake until edges are lightly brown, 7 to 8 minutes. You can sprinkle cookies with brightly colored sprinkles before placing them in the oven or you can let them cool and decorate as desired.

Eggnog Cream Cheese Frosting:

4 ounces Butter

4 ounces Cream Cheese

1 tsp Vanilla

¼ cup Eggnog

2-1/2 cups Powdered Sugar

¼ tsp Nutmeg

dash Cinnamon

dash Salt

Whip butter and cream cheese until fluffy

Add vanilla, beat.  Mix in powdered sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt, slowly drizzle in eggnog until desired consistency