MidWest Meets MidEast

Or, Sugar Cookies with Saffron Icing.

Cookie dough:

Combine

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

In another bowl, cream together

1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg

Then add in

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract---or, as I've done recently, approximately two teaspoons, minced almonds

Add dry flour mixture into wet mixture, and beat thoroughly. Roll the dough into a long sausage, wrap it in plastic, and chill it for at least an hour---but overnight is much better.

When you're ready to roll out and bake your cookies:
Start infusing your saffron:

Crumble one teaspoon of saffron into one to two tablespoons of hot water. Set aside to soak.

And preheat oven to 350F.

Shaping dough:

This cookie dough tends to be very sticky. It's easiest to work with when it has just barely softened, so I'd advise you cut off one piece of the dough-sausage at a time and leaving the rest to chill.

On a (very!) well-floured surface, roll the dough out to about an eighth-inch thick. Cut into shapes. I usually use a small drinking-glass as a cookie-cutter; this dough is soft enough to make more intricate cutters painful to work with.

Baking:

Arrange onto non-stick or lightly greased or parchment-papered cookie tins. The cookies don't expand very much, so you can load them fairly closely together.

Bake at 350F for 8-9 minutes. I like them barely golden. In fact, I like them decidedly undercooked. Cool on a rack.

Icing:

2 cups powdered sugar
1 egg white
1-2 Tablespoons water infused with 1 teaspoon ground saffron
Maybe a drop or two of red food-coloring...

Mix it together thoroughly in a warm environment--over a small flame if your place is cold--and spread over the cooled cookies with a knife.