The year for sugar cookie excellence

Here it is, the middle of January, and I haven't even told you about an important New Year's Resolution! Now I love to make resolutions each year, and even have success with a few of them. This year, my resolutions range from the physical (crank up my speed on the treadmill a notch each month) to the professional (complete at least two books, one fiction, one non-fiction) and the spiritual (memorize the Sermon on the Mount). I also made a tea-related resolution, and it is this: master the art of making sugar cookies in teapot and teacup shapes.

Over the weekend I decided to do an inventory of my tea-themed cookie cutters. My most-used set is this one, which I believe is missing the largest of what once was a set of three. The middle one (the larger of the two here) is the one I use most often for cutting out bread for tea sandwiches.

This teacup-and-saucer cookie cutter still had the original tie-on with it, telling me I'd never used it. It was time to untie that twine and get down to business!

I believe the only cookie cutter I've used in this set is the teaspoon. I saw some cute sugar cookies online that used this particular cutter, so now I'm inspired to make teaspoon cookies to match my teacup cookies.

And I'd bought this Wilton set last year but hadn't used it yet, so it was time to break it in as well.

In fact, the rounded shape of the Wilton cookie cutter teapot was easiest to cut out of my sugar cookie dough—I use the recipe from the wonderful book "Cookie Craft"—so this is the cookie shape I ended up using the most. For this first try, I just wanted to make sugar cookies, not decorate them, to make sure I remembered the techniques from "Cookie Craft." Done. And tomorrow, if you're into baking, I really *must* tell you about a new gadget I have that has revolutionized my cookie baking!