‘Tis the season for cookie decorating with the Drakes!

Cookies:

2 ½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons orange juice (Can add more for a more orangey taste. I do!)
1 tablespoon vanilla or almond extract (the kids like vanilla, I like almond)

Combine all cookie ingredients in a large bowl. Beat at low speed until well mixed. Divide dough into thirds. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate until firm. It usually takes 2 or 3 hours to get firm. When I’m impatient, I stick it in the freezer to speed it up. Make sure to keep watch so as not to freeze it.

When the dough is ready, heat oven 400 degrees.

Roll out dough on well-floured surface to about ¼ inch. Use fun holiday cookie cutters. Place on 1 inch apart on baking sheets. Bake for 6 to 10 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned.

Depending on how many people are coming over, I usually double or triple the recipe. Everyone loves to take decorated cookies home!

Frosting:

4 cups sugar
½ cup butter, softened (can substitute for margarine)
3 to 4 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

In a small bowl, combine all frosting ingredients. Beat at low speed until fluffy. Separate frosting and use your favorite holiday food coloring to color the frosting.

Grab various sprinkles, candies, and cookie/cake decorations and put them in the middle of the table along with the frosting. Place several plastic knives and paper plates around the table, and let the cookie decorating fun begin!

For Christmas every year, our family and friends come over to my house to decorate cookies. I spend all day cutting special shapes and backing them so that we have several piles for everyone to have fun putting their own flair to their cookies. It’s tons of fun and the group loves being creative. And the cookies are so yummy! My family has been making them for decades. Not only is it a tradition, but also a way to take a break from our busy schedules and enjoy spending time together. I’m happy to share the recipe with you today!

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About Thief of Lies:

Gia Kearns would rather fight with boys than kiss them. That is, until Arik, a leather clad hottie in the Boston Athenaeum, suddenly disappears. While examining the book of world libraries he abandoned, Gia unwittingly speaks the key that sucks her and her friends into a photograph and transports them into a Paris library, where Arik and his Sentinels—magical knights charged with protecting humans from the creatures traveling across the gateway books—rescue them from a demonic hound.

Jumping into some of the world’s most beautiful libraries would be a dream come true for Gia, if she weren’t busy resisting her heart or dodging an exiled wizard seeking revenge on both the Mystik and human worlds. Add a French flirt obsessed with Arik and a fling with a young wizard, and Gia must choose between her heart and her head, between Arik’s world and her own, before both are destroyed.