Sandwich cookies

It's almost Valentine's Day and I'm going to share our family's favorite sugar cookie recipe. These cookies have travelled to college dorms, apartments, even to Scotland the year our daughter studied there. They're like a hug.
I found this recipe in the newspaper many, many years ago, and it was an old family recipe even then.

We call this cookie Sandwich Cookie because we found it easier to store and eat with the frosting on the inside. This is a very old sugar cookie recipe so it's bland and soft. The sweetness comes from the frosting. This isn't a fussy recipe, it's just old and crispy isn't the look we're going for.

Sandwich cookie

1/2 cup blutter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. baking soda dissolved in 2 TBSP. milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 egg, slightly beaten

pinch of salt

2 1/2 cups flour

Cream together butter and sugar. Add soda mixture, vanilla, egg and salt. Blend in 2 cups flour and then slowly maybe add the other half cup. Depending on the day, the time or the mood, if you use the whole 2 1/2 cups you could end up with an unmanageable mess and a yucky, tough cookie. I slowly add that half cup - sometimes not at all! You want a nice rollable not sticky dough.

Roll the dough out on a surface lightly sprinkled with powdered sugar, not flour, to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with cookie cutter and bake at 350 for 5 minutes. Watch them so they don't turn brown. This is a soft cookie, you don't want crunch.

I don't use a mixer on the dough. I imagine, because of the age of this recipe, a grandma standing at a counter mixing in a heavy bowl with a wooden spoon so that's what I do.

Depending on the size of your cookie cutter, and because you're going to sandwich the frosting between two cookies, you may not end up with many so I always double the batch. If you do then be careful NOT to double the flour to 5 cups. I use about 4 1/2 cups.

You can use a standard buttercream frosting, chocolate, mint. Never canned frosting!

Enjoy and Happy Valentine's Day!