Sugar Cookies and Good News!

First things first, Happy Thanksgiving!! I know, I am a little late, but still wanted to Thank You All for being part of my virtual and culinary world!
A friend invited us over for Thanksgiving and we had lots of fun, especially Matheus, who played the whole afternoon with the kids and had a very happy day! Since we went to Miriam’s house I did not have to cook much, so no new recipes these past days… to take to her house on Thursday I made Mashed Potatoes and a Barefoot Contessa recipe for Cranberry Fruit Conserve, which is very good and easy to make! (Recipe can be found here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_24930,00.html) My friend made a nice turkey and other guests provided all the trimmings; very nice people, good food, it sure was fun!
Yesterday we did not have much to do; kind of a lazy day (I guess we were still a little stuffed from the day before!) and Matheus asked if we could bake cookies so he could decorate them. Since my definition of “fun things to do” usually involve the kitchen I was more than happy to make cookies with him!
I used a Sugar Cookie recipe that is extremely easy to do and that don’t need to be chilled before rolling, which is a big plus when making cookies with kids, as they don’t have that much patience to wait for dough to chill, cookies to cool, etc.
I have made this recipe numerous times before and it always come out perfect. It is a very basic recipe, but I do not remember where I got it from… oops! The dough is super easy to work with, it rolls smooth, the cookies are not too sweet and they get nice and crisp after they cool, which also makes them great to decorate!
We used some icing tubes I bought a while ago to decorate the cookies (easy for Matheus to play with and does not make a lot of mess), and some melted chocolate too!
Besides the cookies I have some good news… we are going to Brazil!! Yay!!
We were planning to go next year in January, but ended up deciding to go now and spend Christmas with the family. I can’t wait, I miss my family a lot! I will be going with Matheus on December 5, and the husband two weeks after that, and we will all come back home together in January.
The good thing is that in Sao Paulo (at my parent’s house) I will have access to the Internet so I will try to take some pictures and post them here to share a little bit of Brazil with you, so we all have something to look forward during my trip!
Well, that is it for today. I made a cheesecake yesterday and will post picture and recipe later today, plus there are a few recipes I am planning to make during this week, so come back to visit me!
Ana

Sugar Cookies
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a large bowl cream butter and sugar with electric mixer. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add baking powder and flour one cup at a time, mixing after each addition. The dough will be very stiff. Blend last flour in by hand. Do not chill dough. Divide dough into 2 balls, On a floured surface, roll each ball in a circle approximately 12" in diameter and 1/8" thick. Use cutters as guide; the dough should be only slightly thinner than cutter. Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet on top rack of oven for 6 to 7 minutes, or till cookies are lightly browned