Focus On: Holidays - The best Christmas cookie recipe around

If there's one thing I love to do during the holidays, it's bake!  And you can't have Christmas without cookies. 

Every season I pull out my old-fashioned Mirro cookie press and get to work.

What a throw-back!

The best "spritz" cookies are my mom's recipe.  Be careful, though - you can easily get addicted to eating the dough!  (Do not ask how I know this.)

Snowflake Cookies - or Cream Cheese Spritz Cookies

1 cup butter

3 oz cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups flour, sifted

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Cream butter, cream cheese, and cream sugar well.  Beat in egg yolk and vanilla.  Gradually blend in flour, salt, and cinnamon which have been sifted together.

Fill cookie press.  Form cookies on ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake at 350F for 12 minutes with margarine, or 9 minutes with butter.

Remove at once to cooling racks.

Don't forget to go all Sixties and color your dough with food coloring!  Green for trees, of course, and pink for snowflakes!