Butterscotch Gingerbread Cut-Outs

Christmastime is my favorite time of year. I love the traditions that I have with family and friends, the snow and lights, the time off of work and school...and the treat-making! I grew up with my mom making quite an assortment of treats around the holidays, and I have carried on that tradition with some tried-and-true recipes as well as some new treats I've found.

Every year, my mom makes cut-out cookies from my Grandma Johnson's recipe...we usually leave them plain and dip them in coffee. Mmm! So when I wanted to make cut-outs to bring home last year, I thought I'd try a new recipe so we wouldn't have hundreds of the same cookie for Christmas. I found this recipe in a Christmas Cookie booklet I picked up at the grocery store, and it was a hit!

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened to room temperature

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 packages (3.5 oz each) Jell-O Cook-and-Serve butterscotch pudding mix

3 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. baking powder

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Beat in the eggs.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, pudding mixes, ginger, cinnamon and baking powder.

4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mix well.

5. Wrap the dough in saran wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour (you can even do it overnight if it's easier to make the dough one day and the cookies the next).

6. Once the dough is chilled enough to handle, cut the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. (The dough warms up very easy, so this will keep the one half chilled until you are ready to use it).

7. Roll out one half of the dough to 1/4" thick. Cut with a lightly floured cookie cutter. Place cookies 1" apart on baking sheets.

8. Repeat with the second half of the dough that's in the refrigerator.

9. Bake at 350 degrees for 6 minutes or until firm but not browning on the edges. 

10. Remove to wire racks to cool. 

11. Decorate as desired. (I used red and green Cakemate icing tubes that I bought at the grocery store, but you can decide what type of icing you prefer depending upon how much you want to put on each cookie/how you want to decorate them). I'm not a huge fan of icing, so I kept it simple.