Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies

Hey everyone!  Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving, I sure did.  Today I'm blogging from a Burger King (can you believe it? there's nothing for me to eat here so i'm sipping a bottle of water) because I'm spending the holiday with grandparents in North Carolina and this is the closest wifi place.  So today I'm blogging about some cookies that I made for thanksgiving that have quickly become one of my favorite cookies to bake.  They look a lot like sugar cookies but then when you bite into them it's an explosion of maple syrup, butter, and nutmeg.  Delicious!  I got this recipe from the Smitten Kitchen, where I've discovered a lot of great baking recipes in the past.  So read on and give them a try perhaps for a holiday party (tis the season!)

Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies:

Makes around 40, total time to prepare/cook is about 30 minutes (with at least 2 hours to chill the dough)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of butter (two  sticks) at room temperature
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup of maple syrup (I used grade A but if you can find grade B it's even better)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of fresh grated nutmeg of 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of salt 

My two little helpers

Instructions:

• In a large bowl using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together
• Keeping the mixer going, slowly add the maple syrup and the egg yolk
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, nutmeg, and salt.  Mix up using a whisk

• Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix well using the electric mixer
• The dough will be pretty clumpy so gather it all together and wrap in some cling rap and put in the freezer.  You can keep it in the freezer anywhere from two hours to two days.  Before taking it out to bake, put it in the fridge for about five to ten minutes so the dough thaws a bit.
• Preheat oven to 350°
• Flour a surface to roll out the dough.  What I did was cut the dough ball into fourths and roll out one fourth at a time, putting the rest of the dough back in the freezer until I was ready for it)
• Cut into your favorite shapes (mine were bats this time because for some reason we couldn't figure out what happened to all our cookie cutters.  All that were left were the Halloween ones)
• Arrange on baking sheets and bake for 8-11 minutes each, or until the cookies are golden brown on the edges
• Once cooked, let them cool and enjoy!