I did these last year, but didn’t really go into much detail about them.

I originally found these in an old Taste of Home magazine my aunt gave me.

This is some leftover cutout cookie dough.   You can certainly use your favorite recipe…or you can certainly use store-bought.  My cutout dough has no leavening (no baking powder or soda), so it holds its shape pretty well during the baking process.

I split the dough in half (or so), and I’m going to use paste food color to color one half of the dough red.

I’m sure there’s a scientific-er way to do this…And by “scientific-er” I mean “cleaner”…I just slap some on there and start kneading the color into the dough.

And start kneading….

Gloves are probably a good idea, too.   It’s okay…I’ll just walk around the rest of the day looking like I murdered someone.

Don’t be shy with the food color – some of the color will fade during baking…

Okay…So let’s start with the red:

I made 1 large ball for the body, 2 medium sized balls for the legs, 2 a bit smaller for the arms, and 2 very small for the feet.

You can use any size you like…My large ball is probably about 1″…and they go down from there.

Now we need a head and some feet…

And let’s go back to the red for a hat:

Just roll one side of a large-sized ball…

I usually hook it down so it sits kinda jauntily:

Now we smoosh.

Just flatten all the balls and smoosh them together.

I flattened the feet and hands into the ball above…

And he’s ready for the oven!

I made 5 and had this much left over:

So we could make a…candy cane?

Roll out a piece of each color:

Twist:

And make the hook:

Let’s bake!  350 for about 15 minutes (they’re thicker than normal cookies)…

Aren’t they funny?

After they cool…get out some royal icing.

‘Cause he needs a beard, right?  And some fuzzies on his hat?

Maybe some eyes would help…I just used black royal icing, I think in the original they used mini chocolate chips.  Whatevs ya got.

I ain’t gonna lie:  These are fragile.

I had one casualty, but I just glued him back together with the royal icing…

Once it dries, he’ll be a rock star once again.

I usually stick these in assorted cookie sets…

Super cute, right?

Probably my favorite of all Christmas cookies.

If only for the cute factor.

Via AmyBakesEverything.com

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