Christmas Cookies

Yesterday I went to my mom's house and baked Christmas cookies with my mom, my sis, my Aunt Doris, and my daughter Kendra.  We all had a great time.  We baked some Italian Viscotta Cookies, which are a family tradition for us, and we baked some Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip cookies.  The Neiman Marcus cookies were first timers for us but they turned out very good.   Here are the Italian cookies....

You can also icing them.  We use confectioners sugar and milk or water mixed together and spread it on the cookies, then add some sprinkles.  We leave some plain too.  They are delicious both ways.  Here is the recipe if anyone is interested:

3 lb. cakes flour (about 12 cups)
1 lb. crisco shortening
1 lb. confectioners sugar
3 tbsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. vanilla
8 eggs

Combine flour, sugar, & baking powder, then cut in shortening with pastry blender.  Beat eggs, add vanilla & blend into flour mixture.  Mix with hands until all ingredients are blended.  Bake at 375 degrees until bottoms are turning a very light brown (around 12 minutes I think).

Mostly we just make our own shapes, but we also roll some dough out and use cookie cutters.  My daughter Kendra was in charge of that this year.  She kind of got bored of it though after a couple hours.

Here are the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies:

I don't have the recipe with me to post, my sister found that recipe and I didn't get a copy from her.  Sorry about that.  What is pictured here though isn't even a quarter of what this recipe makes.  It makes ALOT of cookies.  These were very good.  We all said we wouldn't replace traditional chocolate chip cookies with these but it was nice to have something different.