Basic Butter Cookies

Ingredients

• Butter or margarine for greasing cookie sheets
• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 16 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• ⅔ cup superfine sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla or almond extract
• Glaze or flavored sugar (optional; see note below)

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets and set aside.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt onto a sheet of wax paper and set aside. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream the butter until light. Add the sugar and beat until fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and beat until the dough is smooth.
3. The dough can be shaped in a variety of ways: dropped from a teaspoon, molded into balls or run through the thin setting of a cookie press. It may also be packed into a pastry bag fitted with a large or small star tip to make “spritz cookies” in the shapes of rosettes or wreaths or in S-shapes. Leave 1 inch between cookies.
4. Bake in the middle of the oven for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges begin to turn golden.
5. Transfer the cookies to racks to cool. (Cookies may be stored in an airtight container for up to 10 days or in the freezer for two months.)

• Cookies can be glazed after baking or sprinkled with vanilla sugar (see recipes below). For orange- or lemon-flavored cookies, substitute 4 teaspoons of grated orange skin or 2 teaspoons of grated lemon skin and 1 or 2 teaspoons of fresh orange or lemon juice for the extract.