For those who don’t care for cake or cupcakes, these sugar cookies are a great birthday treat. I baked up a batch of these for Joe’s birthday today. They are my favorite type of sugar cookies; mix and drop, no chilling time required.

Mother’s Best Cookies, recipe from local community cookbook

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 c sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 t vanilla
• 2 1/2 c flour

Preheat oven  to 350.                                                                                                                                                                    Mix ingredients and roll out flat with a rolling pin to about 1/4 inch thickness.

Using a pastry knife, cut out the letters for “Happy Birthday”. I free-handed it, but I am sure there are cookie cutters shaped like letters too, which would be nice for kids. Peel away excess dough until you are left with only the letters.

Sprinkle with sugar and flatten gently with the bottom of a glass.

Using the pastry knife or spatula, slide under each cookie to loosen and carefully transfer to greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for about 7-10 minutes.

You will now need to re-cut out the spaces for the letters that filled in while baking to make them recognizable again. The cookies expand while baking, so trim as necessary while still warm to get them back to their original look.

Run pastry knife under each cookie while they are still warm on the pan. Then, let them cool before tranferring to a container or decorating further. These would be fun to frost and decorate, but I know this birthday boy prefers his with just sugar…so at this point I was done!