Alison Lawrence Sugar Cookies

These are Alison Lawrence Sugar Cookies. I first made them December 2003 with Alison and Anthony. Alison and I both enjoy baking and it isn't really Christmas without sugar cookies, right? Alison, Anthony and I assembled in the basement kitchen of our dorm to bake these cookies. The recipe yields 5 dozen large, round cookies. We were using cookie cutters so it made even more.

We spent the entire afternoon in the dorm kitchen baking on borrowed cookies sheets, taking cookies out of the oven, putting more in and making mounds of powdered sugar icing. We let Anthony use the food coloring so our Christmas trees were neon purple and our bells were hot pink. We turned up music up and danced around the kitchen. Eventually we got bored with decorating and started sprinkling them with colored sugar before we baked them. It was actually, if there is such a thing, too many cookies. We spent the next few days giving Christmas cookies to everyone we knew. It was a desperate attempt to spread Christmas cheer and get rid cookies.

We continued this tradition every year afterwards. A few years ago, Alison and I got together to bake. I was very pregnant and we both admitted that we just didn't really feel like baking. But we told everyone that we had. Because we had to, it was a tradition.

When I first baked these bookies eleven years ago with my friends I never imagined that I would be baking them with my own son. We made these yesterday for his class party at school. Who knew this special sugar cookie recipe with sour cream and nutmeg would have such staying power? Who knew it would become such an important fixture in my life? It all started with dancing in the dorm kitchen.

I dance every time I make them.