Santa Claus Cookies

 Use any sugar cookie mix or recipe or buy a pre-made rolled dough (Pillsbury). 

 Make sure you have a great assistant to help with the taste testing!

 If you make your own recipe, roll the sugar cookie dough into a long roll, so that you can slice the cookies. Then place it in the refrigerator or freezer to make it firmer for easy slicing.

 Two slices for each Santa cookie. 

 Leave one circle whole and cut a triangle out of the second one for the hat and the extra two half circles become Santa's mustache. 

 I normally buy Nestle Toll House chocolate chips, but decided to buy Ghiradelli chocolate chips not realizing how BIG they were. So, this Santa is a little bug eyed! You need candy red hots for the nose. 

 You can either use red sprinkles for the hat or you can ice it in red icing after you have baked them.

 I used the natural sugar frosting that came with the Trader Joe's sugar cookie kit for the mustache and hat trim. I grew up using the Cake Mate frosting tubes, which tastes OH SO GOOD, but when I read the ingredients this year and realized that partially hydrogenated oil was part of the ingredients, I decided to pass on the trans fats. I have to admit the Cake Mate frosting tubes with the fun tips create much cuter Santa mustaches and hat trim, but this will do!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas. We are enjoying some of our favorite holiday movies (The Family Stone, Love Actually and The Holiday), drinking hot chocolate, getting ready for Christmas Eve and making this star tree cookie from Crate and Barrel for our family Christmas celebration tomorrow.

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