holiday baking essentials

In my world, holiday baking equals Christmas cookie baking/decorating - one of my favorite family holiday traditions. When my sister and I were little, my dad would do the dough rolling and cookie icing; we'd do the cutting out and then the painstaking decorating, making those cookies beautiful sprinkle by sprinkle (and making our icer grumble about our slowness). Later we started having big family gatherings with aunts & uncles & cousins where we'd do 3-4 batches of dough and end up with my parents' giant kitchen island completely covered with decorated cookies.

It just can't feel like the holidays without making these particular cookies, so now that I live farther away from the family and don't always get to do it with them, I've been carrying on the tradition with an annual cookie decorating party with my local "family." Invitations are in the mail for this year's gathering with friends, and I can't wait - so I'm getting baking supplies prepped! Besides of course the basics (ingredients, baking sheets, etc.) these are 10 essentials for my dough making, baking, and decorating:

1. mixing bowls of various sizes | 2. rubber spatula for scraping the sides of the bowl as you mix | 3. KitchenAid mixer (which I actually don't have... someday I'll have enough kitchen cabinet/counter space to accommodate one!) to whip it all up | 4. cookie cutters - gingerbread guys, trees, and ornaments are some of my favorites to decorate | 5. rolling pin to flatten your dough - my dad trained me to do it thin and even | 6. parchment paper to prevent sticking to your baking sheet and help with easy cleanup | 7. an assortment of sprinkles and sanding sugar to get fancy with | 8. decorating icing pens (or bags/tips) to get even fancier | 9. icing spatula to spread on your frosting base for decorating | 10. the best recipe ever - which really should be listed first - that we actually use year-round (you can get a cookie cutter for any occasion!) and even made for my wedding dessert table

Here's the recipe, which comes from my grandma:

3c flour
1/2t baking soda
1/2t baking powder
1c butter
2 eggs
1c sugar
1t lemon juice

Sift flour, powder & soda; on low speed of mixer cut in butter until mixture resembles cornmeal. In separate bowl beat eggs, add sugar & lemon extract and beat thoroughly. Blend egg mixture into flour/butter mixture until it forms a ball of dough. Chill dough until firm, then roll, cut, and bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes.

For frosting, we always just use powdered sugar and milk - add milk in very small amounts to powdered sugar until you get a good consistency for spreading. Of course, add food coloring as desired. It'll hold sprinkles well and set nice and hard/shiny after a while. These cookies freeze great, so once the frosting has set, you can box them up and stick them in the freezer to thaw a few hours ahead of holiday parties. Or you can just eat them all.

Sharing on The Speckled Palate's Christmas Cookie Week 2014 linkup and Kiki's The Circle linkup, which has an "essentials" theme this month - head over to check out lots of bloggers' essentials in all manner of fun categories.