Over the years, every time around Christmas my husband has lamented about the cookies he used to make with his mom as a child. He brags about how great they were. Year after year he has tried to recreate this recipe, but for some reason the dough never comes out correctly, and the cookie press never seems to be able to form the shapes without making a huge mess out of things.

One year he had some luck with making little green and red Christmas trees and camels. Think he may have used shortening as the original recipe calls for. However, my husband hates partially hydrogenated oils (PFOs). He prefers to use real butter in making cookies. I know we both have grown up with the can of shortening in the cupboard that our moms used to use when making cookies. We have tried to transition butter into our cookie recipes. He originally tried to just omit the shortening and replace it with an equal amount of butter. That made for a sticky dough that would not form shapes or come out of the cookie press. He then tried adding more flour to the recipe, and that didn’t really result in a great tasting cookie at all. This year we managed to increase the flour and sugar and still use butter for the recipe, and the dough came out great.

I have to say this year I really enjoyed the subtle almond flavor of these sugar cookies and finally can appreciate what he was talking about.  The cookies have such a melt in your mouth flavor that they don’t need any extra frosting or sugar sprinkled on the top.