Happy Memorial Day, everyone! It has definitely been a hot one here in Chicago, with temps over 90 degrees and super sunny blue skies! I am not complaining as summer is life to me. So much fun! But since it has been so hot, we decided to stay in today and of course, do some baking. My son helped make these cookies and they are so easy and best of all… do not need to be refrigerated! Cutouts always take so long because you have to refrigerate the dough before you can roll them out, cut out shapes and decorate. This recipe is fridge free! 🙂

This recipe also only makes several small cookies. The stars we did are very small but the flags were bigger so we only got 4 of those. You can easily double the recipe if need be. But super fun and easy, tastes great and is the perfect thing to do if you want to get out of the heat! So go get those aprons on and let’s celebrate and remember our soldiers.

What you will need:

Cookie sheet
Parchment paper and wax paper

1 cup all-purpose flour (plus more for rolling)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Dash of salt
1/3 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Cookie cutouts
Sprinkles

Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In an other bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy and smooth. Beat in yolk and vanilla until combined. Add the flour and beat until just combined. This may take a while. Once the dough starts to form and come together, form a ball with your hands.

Place the dough ball on a lightly floured piece of parchment paper. Flour the top of the ball and then place a piece of wax paper on top. Roll out the dough to desired thickness. Remove wax paper and cut out into desired shapes. The dough is sticky so I just removed the excess dough and placed the parchment paper directly onto a cookie sheet. Decorate with sprinkles and bake for 6-8 minutes. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Note: Transferring the parchment paper directly to the cookie sheet withe the cookies on it works best but I went through quite a few sheets of parchment paper. You can also try removing the cut outs with a metal spatula but mine were too sticky. Do what works best for you.

Enjoy!