Servings: A few dozen
Prep time: One Hour, plus two hours to refrigerate dough
Cook time: 10 Minutes
Difficulty: Moderate

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable shortening
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
about 5 cups flour
1 tsp. Baking soda
1 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. Vanilla extract

Box of Powdered Sugar
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
A little bit of Milk

Cream sugar and shortening. Mix in egg, buttermilk, and vanilla. Mix 4 cups flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sift. Combine flour and shortening mixtures. Dough will be sticky. Let stand in refrigerator several hours or overnight. Take a baseball sized lump of dough and roll it out thin on a well floured surface. Cut out cookies and place them on a greased sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 325? or until the edges turn a faint brown. Don’t over-bake, it makes them hard and dry. The frosting recipe is a little free form. Mix powdered sugar and a tsp. of vanilla with a very little milk at a time. Stir until frosting is spreadable. Spread frosting on the cooled cookies and sprinkle on colored sugar decorations while frosting is wet.

These are the Dearing traditional Christmas cookies. Many a kid has gathered around a table to decorate cookies made from this recipe.