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Over the weekend, Pere and I baked up a batch of sugar cookies. There are certain recipes I'm sentimental about, and sugar cookies are one of them.

I prefer the recipe my mom's used ever since I was a little kid. She would make the dough early in the morning, or sometimes the night before, and later in the day, my brothers and I would use our cookie cutters to make all sorts of wonderful shapes. I once tried to make a huge cookie from all of the left-over dough, but that didn't work out as well as intended. I digress...

Here's the family recipe, in case you want to give it a shot:

• 2/3 cup butter
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs, beaten
• grated rind of one orange
• 1 tbsp orange juice

Start by creaming the butter and sugar. Add the beaten eggs and mix well (I use a stand mixer). Meanwhile, add the salt and baking powder to the flour and slowly add to the mixing bowl. Next, add the orange zest and orange juice. Continue mixing until all ingredients are well incorporated.

I like to remove the dough from the mixing bowl and place into a greased bowl (for easier removal later). Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator to chill.

Once the dough has chilled, remove it from the refrigerator and place on a lightly floured surface. You may want to cut the dough in half to make it more manageable. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch and cut with your cutters. I find that using a dough cutter/scraper to transfer the cookies to ungreased cookie sheets is easier than doing it by hand. Once you have the cut cookies on cookie sheets, feel free to decorate with colored sugar. Bake at 325 for 12-15 minutes, depending on your oven and desired doneness. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.