Every New Year’s Eve, the Imaginative One, the Wee One, and I head to my mother-in-law’s house to ring in the new year.  A new tradition was created a couple of years ago.  The grandkids (4 of them in total) spend the night at grandma and grandpa’s house after staying up until midnight.  Mommy and daddy (if he is off work) go home to a nice empty house.

We watch tv or movies, eat snacks, or play games during the hours that lead up to midnight.  The kids also do a craft.  Last year, it was painting Christmas ornaments that my mother-in-law stored until Christmas time this year.  I decided we could decorate sugar cookies.  I already knew which cookies I was going to bake.  The problem was what kind of frosting I would make for the cookies.  I didn’t want a glaze that would be super messy, and I didn’t want anything that would be too difficult to frost a cookie with.

I finally found the recipe at Allrecipes.com.  It was super easy to put together using my Kitchen aid mixer.

After I whipped up the frosting, I put it into 4 separate containers and added different food dyes to the frosting so they could have different colors.  When I handed each of them a container of frosting, they stayed with that one color, except the Imaginative One.

(I made some of the cookies into the shape of vampire’s teeth because I thought the boys would enjoy decorating those.  They also decorated the cookies on placemats so there would be less mess to clean up.  The sprinkles I had were Valentine-themed ones, so my nephew used those on his sugar cookies.)

Here is the recipe:

Sugar Cookie Frosting

Stars of the recipe:

• 2 cups of powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup of shortening or butter
• 2 Tbsp and 1.5 tsp of milk
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• food coloring

Steps:

1. In a large bowl, cream together powdered sugar and shortening (or softened butter)
2. Gradually mix the milk and vanilla extract with an electric mixer until smooth and stiff (about 5 minutes).
3. Color with food coloring if desired.

Printable Recipe