Christmas cookies

Last Sunday, we made Christmas cookies! There were two batches of Alton Brown's sugar cookies (the roll out kind). The recipe is very easy. Rolling out takes some time, but it isn't hard since the recipe calls for them to be a quarter inch thick. We frosted them with a white frosting from Allrecipes, which I'd recommend. Nothing special, but it was the right texture for cookies and it hardened slightly. I did use butter instead of shortening because shortening weirds me out.

Alton Brown also has three chocolate chip cookie recipes: chewy, crispy and puffy. We made one batch of the chewy. I usually have very good results with this recipe, but we messed up somewhere this time and the cookies went from underdone to overdone way too fast. Still, I'd recommend this recipe based on my past successes.

Here's are links for the cookies/frosting:
Sugar cookies: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_25187,00.html
Sugar cookie frosting: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sugar-Cookie-Frosting/Detail.aspx
I used butter, instead of shortening, in this recipe.
Chocoate chip cookies: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_13617,00.html
I used unbleached, all-purpose flour, instead of bread flour, in this recipe.

Here's me rolling out the dough:


And here's the finished product!