we loved this recipe. i made my cookies 1/4" thick by 4" across; they baked for about 7 minutes. the frosting is grand. i used my food processor to make the frosting and since the dough yielded me 18 great big cookies and one mutant one, that the dogs devoured, i cut the frosting recipe in half; so, .5C butter, 1.5C powdered sugar, .5T vanilla, 3-4T evaporated milk. the frosting was a little lighter in color than the evaporated milk so next time i might try milk and see if that gets me the white i want. the frosting generously covered my cookies and i topped them with rainbow sprinkles because i was feeling nostalgic. thanks for sharing becky.

I submitted this over a year ago, so just a little update: I doubled the cookie recipe and I think I tripled the frosting recipe because I typically make a ton of them at the holidays and I dye the frosting different colors. (I usually have frosting left over) The cookie by itself is indeed rather bland, which is why I included the frosting recipe. The cookie recipe came from my grandmother who got it from a bag of flour, which may explain why it has a "flour taste". I've never experimented with using the dough for anything else, but I appreciate the suggestion! Lastly, I would watch the first batch in the oven pretty closely because mine are usually done in 4 to 5 minutes. If they look brown on the edges, they're a little overdone.

These are true "old-fashioned" cookies. If you are used to something that tastes like those sweet, soft, sugary (hydrogenated, processed) decorated cookies they sell in the bakery section of your local grocer, this is not for you. "Scratch" baking lacks the commercial chemicals that are specifically meant to enhance texture and flavor! If you like a firmer cookie with a not-too sweet, but subtle flavor, you might want to try these. At first I followed the recipe exactly. The dough was very firm after chilling, but softened up fairly quickly and rolled out well. The cookies also held their shape while baking. The icing really compliments these cookies, which do taste kind of dry and floury when they first come out of the oven, but mellow if you let them sit for a while. The icing dries hard like glaze, but it has a nice flavor that makes up for any "blandness" in these cookies. I ended up with way too much icing, so I will probably only make half next time. I then tried rolling the latter half of the batch in powdered sugar instead of flour to compensate for the floury taste. The result was that I now had to line the pans with parchment paper because the sugar caused them to stick. I also made thumbprint cookies with some of the scraps; they were pretty good. I only gave this recipe 4 stars because I wanted any prospective bakers to read reviews before trying it. These cookies do what they are supposed to, but individual preferences are DEFINITELY going to affect the ratings.