Falling Leaves

Have you ever had a best friend that no matter how terrible you've been you just couldn't shake? That the two of you have been through so much that you might as well be sisters? That pretty much you know that unless you killed her husband and ran off with her son you are going to be forgiven and she will continue to be your best friend. Well I'm lucky enough to have a friend like that. We've been friends for a couple decades and then some, and a couple weeks ago tragedy hit her mom and stepdad.

At a loss for anything better to do I made cookies. I also made lasagna and those delicious peanut butter brownies from Smitten Kitchen's blog. (OK so she only got half of the brownies. The Brain and I discovered that we really couldn't have just one.) The cookies at least made her smile.

At the time it was the peak of fall colors and I wanted to capture it and pass it on. Because I am somewhat of a dork, I had picked up leaf and acorn cookie cutters a few weeks earlier simply because I didn't already have them. I also happened to have green, yellow, orange and red colored sugar and chocolate jimmies. It was like a sign from God that I should be making leaf cookies.

So why am I posting about this now? Well, see, I had a moment of new blogger enthusiasm and I joined this group NaBloPoMo. Nanoo Nanoo. To sum up, November is National Blog Posting Month so I signed up and said, "sure, I'll write in my blog every single day." Of course new blogger enthusiasm made me forget that for part of the month we'll be managing two houses and 3 very silly dogs. And while I'm happy to post everyday, and I'm happy to be managing the houses and the dogs, sometimes all the things I'm happy to be doing take more hours in the day than I'm supposed to be awake.


These are Aunt Nicky's Butter cookies. I am almost embarrassed to say, I don't know who Aunt Nicky is. She is either the Brain's aunt, or his mother's. Whoever she is, God Bless her, she made a delicious butter cookie recipe. It's tasty and yet sturdy and that's a hard thing for a cut out cookie to be. These are the cookies that I make into different sized snowflake cookies at Christmas time and ship around the country. Last year hardly any broke.




Aunt Nicky's Butter Cookies

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 egg yolks plus 1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder


Cream together butter, powdered sugar, and eggs. Add to that vanilla, flour and baking powder. Chill for 1-2 hours. Roll out for cutouts. Mix the egg whites left from separating the eggs with a little bit of water. Paint the egg white mixture on raw cookie dough and sprinkle with sprinkles before baking. Bake 12 to 15 minutes in a 325 degree oven.