Fall Leaves Sugar Cookies

John and I love Barnes and Noble. If we are bored and have nothing to do we will often go there and waste some time (and spend some money...) Recently I picked up a magazine, Harvest Baking by Land o Lakes, and have been dying to make some of the goodies I found in there. I knew these would be my first attempt from the magazine because they are just so cute.

Now I don't normally consider myself a stubborn person but these cookies made me nuts. The dough was so hard to work with! It would go from so firm/bordering too hard to soft and unworkable in literally 60 seconds! I rolled and rerolled the dough so many times before I got it to work. I finally figured out a method that worked- freezing the cookie sheets, then flouring them, rolling out the dough, freezing the sheet with the dough for a couple minutes, cutting the cookies SUPER quickly, and sticking it back in the freezer if it got soft. Yikes. The cookies came out adorable but next time I make them I would just use a different sugar cookie recipe as my base. I will say that despite all of my issues they are delicious and very cute! Definitely worth the effort once I figured out a technique.

Source: Harvest Baking, Fall 2009

Ingredients:
1 cup of butter, softened
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons of milk
1.5 teaspoons of almond extract
2.5 cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
Red, orange, and yellow gel food coloring
Course white sugar

Directions:
1-Cream your butter and sugar together.
2- Add egg, milk, and almond extract, beat until smooth. Reduce speed to low, add flour and baking powder, beat until well combined.
3- Divide the dough into 3 bowls. Add a small amount of food coloring to eat bowl until they are the desired color.
4- Shape into balls, flatten until 1/2 inch thick. Wrap in plastic wrap, refrigerate 2-3 hours, until firm.
5- Preheat the oven to 400.
6- Working with half of each color dough, tear the pieces into small chunks and lay them on a floured surface so they are touching. Then use a rolling pin and roll the dough out so the pieces form a marbled design. Make sure the extra half of each cookie dough stays in the fridge!
7- Using a leaf shaped cookie cutter cut the cookies and place 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with decorating sugar.
8- Repeat steps 6 and 7 with the remaining dough.
9- Bake 7-9 minutes. Cool 1 minute on the cookie sheet and then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

** If your dough is too soft and you are unable to work with it place it in the freezer a few minutes.