Best Sugar Cookie Recipe

 Figuring out what to do for my husband for Valentine's Day is easy. He loves this sugar cookie recipe so much that I can't go wrong making it for him every year. Honestly, it's like husband crack. Sometimes we have to freeze the extras so he doesn't make himself sick eating all of them. The photo above is last year's giant heart cookie with cream cheese frosting. Below are tiny cookies my sister and I made for my daughter's wedding. They have a simple glaze, which was easier than a thick frosting for hundreds of cookies. I can't say we'll be doing that again any time soon, but they were so pretty (and tasty!).

Sugar Cookies

3/4 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Cream together the butter and sugar in a mixer until smooth. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and stir. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out on a floured surface to 1/2" thick. Use cookie cutters or a knife to cut the shapes. (If you are making a large heart, flatten the dough right on the cookie sheet, cut out shape and pull off scraps.) Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 6 - 8 minutes until just set and golden on edges. Cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar

Mix the cream cheese, butter and vanilla in a mixer until smooth. Gradually add powdered sugar. If frosting is too thick, add a few teaspoons of milk.

Diaper Cakes

I wanted to do something creative and fun for my grandson's baby shower, so when a co-worker brought this diaper cake as a gift for another instructor at work, I immediately knew I had to make one. The happy couple are starving students, so cute AND practical was a winning combination. Here is the result:

The diapers are from Target, and the blue and green spots were perfect to support a frog stuffed animal I had picked up earlier in a moment of I'm-gonna-be-a-grandma-so-I-have-an-excuse-to-buy-cute-things. The rosebud socks weren't as successful on my cake as they were on my co-worker's, I think because the colors don't read "flowers" but oh, well.

If you want to construct your own, there are a plethora of tutorials online (click here for a good one), plus here are a few tips: roll each diaper and use a white rubber band to hold it in place. Use a dowel down the middle of the cake to hold the whole thing together (if you don't use cardboard circles under each layer, which I didn't), and buy a bigger size diaper than newborn, because mom and dad might want to admire your handiwork for a while before disassembling it.