Italian-American butter cookies (aka, the ones kids love)

Walk into an Italian bakery and you're likely to see shelves and shelves of butter cookies in an array of varieties and shapes.  They may be decked out in sprinkles, filled with jam or fudge, or dipped in chocolate. 

Before I started baking so often at home, I'd take my little one to a nearby Italian bakery and aside from the almond cookies, he always wanted these butter cookies.  I think they're generally popular with kids since they're so eye-catching with all the chocolate, colorful sprinkles and jam involved. Moreover, the pure flavor of butter and vanilla just goes down easy.

So this year, with my son in mind, I thought I'd try my hand at making these kid-friendly cookies at home.  In all their varieties, but from one basic dough, they are festive-looking and great for a holiday cookie platter.

I kept things traditional and simple, resisting the urge to add vanilla beans or almond extract, or to try the version that contains almond paste.  Those are projects for another time.  This basic cookie dough is fun to play with in terms of the variety of cookies you can make. You can pipe different shapes using one star tip.  For the embellishments, I tucked some of the centers with mini chocolate chips, candied cherries, and fruit preserves before baking.  I sandwich some together with apricot preserve and dipped a bunch in chocolate ganache.  Sprinkles make everything even better.

These cookies made me smile and baking them really put me in the holiday mood.  Before starting, I thought they might be a bit of a hassle to make but not only does the dough comes together in a flash, it was easy to work with in terms of piping.  That was actually a lot of fun - quick and easy, too.

These also make me think of Danish butter cookies - those blue tins have a special place in my heart. I didn't grow up eating many sweets but we did have those butter cookies.  As a child, I loved opening up the tin, taking a long whiff of that delicious buttery aroma, and looking inside, I'd finger those paper liners, deciding which shape I wanted to eat.  I loved the pretzel shape with the coarse sugar on top the best.  These cookies are similar to Danish butter cookies though it seems the Danish ones are more commonly made with confectioners' sugar (somewhat like these cookies).  Now I realize I'll have yet another project for next Christmas!

I hope these little cookies make you smile the way they did for us.